title: To age, to die: parity, evolutionary tracking and Cole's paradox.
abstract: The existence of semelparity or "big bang" reproduction (reproducing only once in a lifetime) and iteroparity (reproducing more than once in a lifetime) has led to many questions investigating the evolution or persistence of these strategies. Here we investigate semelparity and iteroparity for their evolutionary importance. A mathematical model is used to illustrate how a population's ability to evolve depends on this life-history trait, and how this rate of evolution impacts the individual. We find that the ability of a trait to evolve is greater toward a semelparous strategy and this expresses a fitness advantage. This leads to an optimality between survival, population tracking ability, and lifetime fecundity.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway - University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, United Kingdom. m.zeineddine@abdn.ac.uk
authors.forename: Mohammed
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zeineddine
authors.forename: Vincent A A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Jansen
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010298:Parity; D011247:Pregnancy; D012098:Reproduction / Q000235:genetics