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Effects of parental survival on clutch size decisions in fluctuating environments

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Abstract

Whereas in constant environments parental survival has no effect on optimal clutch size in the absence of trade-offs between juvenile and parental survival, the situation is drastically different in fluctuating environments. We consider a model in which, with respect to reproduction, parents and offspring are equivalent at the start of the next breeding season. When generations are non-overlapping, the clutch size maximizing geometric mean surviving number of offspring is optimal among all pure clutch size strategies. We prove that, as parental survival increases relative to that of the offspring, the optimal clutch size converges to the arithmetic mean maximizing clutch size (the so-called ‘Lack clutch size’). We also give a numerical procedure for calculating optimal mixed strategies and we show that, as environmental variance increases and/or parental survival decreases, mixed rather than pure strategies become optimal. Furthermore, we explain how to estimate fitness from empirical data under the assumptions of our model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Evolutionary and Ecological Sciences, University of Leiden, P.O. Box 9516, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Patsy Haccou

  2. School of Mathematics, University of Bristol, University Walk, Bristol, BS8 1TW, UK

    John M. Mcnamara

Authors
  1. Patsy Haccou
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  2. John M. Mcnamara
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Haccou, P., Mcnamara, J.M. Effects of parental survival on clutch size decisions in fluctuating environments. Evolutionary Ecology 12, 459–475 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006524922128

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