Estimating individual contributions to population growth: evolutionary fitness in ecological time
Author
Summary, in English
Ecological and evolutionary change is generated by variation in individual performance. Biologists have consequently long been interested in decomposing change measured at the population level into contributions from individuals, the traits they express and the alleles they carry. We present a novel method of estimating individual contributions to population growth and changes in distributions of quantitative traits and alleles. An individual's contribution to population growth is an individual's realized annual fitness. We demonstrate how the quantities we develop can be used to address a range of empirical questions, and provide an application to a detailed dataset of Soay sheep. The approach provides results that are consistent with those obtained using lifetime estimates of individual performance, yet is substantially more powerful as it allows lifetime performance to be decomposed into annual survival and fecundity contributions.
Publishing year
2006
Language
English
Pages
547-555
Publication/Series
Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences
Volume
273
Issue
1586
Full text
- Available as PDF - 196 kB
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Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Royal Society Publishing
Topic
- Biological Sciences
Status
Published
Research group
- Theoretical Population Ecology and Evolution Group
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1471-2954