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    R and K Reproductive Strategies

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    John Osborne
    Organisms that live in stable environments tend to produce few, expensive offspring (K-selection), while those in unstable environments tend to produce many, cheap offspring (r-selection). R-selected species, like many invertebrates, have characteristics adapted to unpredictable environments like small size, early maturity, and producing many offspring with little investment. K-selected species, like large animals, have characteristics adapted to stable environments like large size, late maturity, producing few offspring but with high investment. The terms r-selection and K-selection describe these evolutionary strategies.

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    R and K Reproductive Strategies

    Uploaded by

    John Osborne
    796 views6 pages
    Organisms that live in stable environments tend to produce few, expensive offspring (K-selection), while those in unstable environments tend to produce many, cheap offspring (r-selection). R-selected species, like many invertebrates, have characteristics adapted to unpredictable environments like small size, early maturity, and producing many offspring with little investment. K-selected species, like large animals, have characteristics adapted to stable environments like large size, late maturity, producing few offspring but with high investment. The terms r-selection and K-selection describe these evolutionary strategies.

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    The two reproductive stategies explained

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    r and K reproductive strategies

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    Organisms that live in stable environments tend to produce few, expensive offspring (K-selection), while those in unstable environments tend to produce many, cheap offspring (r-selection). R-selected species, like many invertebrates, have characteristics adapted to unpredictable environments like small size, early maturity, and producing many offspring with little investment. K-selected species, like large animals, have characteristics adapted to stable environments like large size, late maturity, producing few offspring but with high investment. The terms r-selection and K-selection describe these evolutionary strategies.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    796 views6 pages

    R and K Reproductive Strategies

    Uploaded by

    John Osborne
    Organisms that live in stable environments tend to produce few, expensive offspring (K-selection), while those in unstable environments tend to produce many, cheap offspring (r-selection). R-selected species, like many invertebrates, have characteristics adapted to unpredictable environments like small size, early maturity, and producing many offspring with little investment. K-selected species, like large animals, have characteristics adapted to stable environments like large size, late maturity, producing few offspring but with high investment. The terms r-selection and K-selection describe these evolutionary strategies.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 6

    r and K selection

    Organisms that live in stable environments tend to make few,


    "expensive" offspring. Organisms that live in unstable
    environments tend to make many, "cheap" offspring.
    Imagine that you are one of the many invertebrate organisms which existed during the
    Cambrian or one of their descendents living today. Maybe you live in a tide pool which is
    washed by waves. A storm appears on the horizon. The waves increase in height. You feel
    yourself being dashed upon the rocks or into the mouth of a much larger and predatory
    animal. Finally, you begin to see your brothers and sisters die, one by one, as the forces of
    nature change your unpredictable environment.

    If you could design a "strategy" to overcome the problems created by an unpredictable


    environment, you would have two choices - go with the flow or cut and run to a more
    stable environment.

    Suppose you stayed. Then, one thing you could do would be to increase the number of
    offspring. Make lots of cheap (requiring little energy investment) offspring instead of a few
    expensive, complicated ones (requiring a lot of energy investment). If you lose a lot of
    offspring to the unpredictable forces of nature, you still have some left to live to
    reproductive age and pass on your genes to future generations. Many invertebrates follow
    this strategy - lots of eggs are produced and larvae are formed but only a few survive to
    produce mature, reproductive adults. Many insects and spiders also follow this strategy.

    Alternatively, you could adapt to a more stable environment. If you could do that, you
    would find that it would be worthwhile to make fewer, more expensive offspring. These
    offspring would have all the bells and whistles necessary to ensure a comfortable,
    maximally productive life. Since the environment is relatively stable, your risk of losing
    offspring to random environmental factors is small. Large animals, such as ourselves,
    follow this strategy.

    Plants are also subject to the same sorts of forces as animals. Some live in unstable
    environments such as a floodplain near a river or a gap in the forest caused by falling trees.
    Others live in a quite stable environment, such as a climax forest.
    The two evolutionary "strategies" are termed r-selection, for
    those species that produce many "cheap" offspring and live in
    unstable environments and K-selection for those species that
    produce few "expensive" offspring and live in stable
    environments.
    Of course, the animal or plant is not thinking: "How do I change my characteristics?"
    Natural selection is the force for change, not the individual's conscious decision. But,
    natural selection has produced a gradation of strategies, with extreme r-selection at one end
    of the spectrum and extreme K-selection at the other end.

    The following table compares some characteristics of organisms which are extreme r or K
    strategists:

    r K
    Stable environment, density dependent
    Unstable environment, density independent
    interactions
    small size of organism large size of organism
    energy used to make each individual is low energy used to make each individual is high
    many offspring are produced few offspring are produced
    late maturity, often after a prolonged period of
    early maturity
    parental care
    short life expectancy long life expectancy
    individuals can reproduce more than once in their
    each individual reproduces only once
    lifetime
    type III survivorship pattern
    type I or II survivorship pattern
    in which most of the individuals die within a
    in which most individuals live to near the maximum
    short time
    life span
    but a few live much longer
    The terms "r-selected" and "K-selected" come from a
    description of the population growth regimes of the two types of
    organisms.
    If you are in an unstable environment, you are unlikely to ever have population growth to
    the point where density dependent factors come into play. The population is still at low
    values relative to the carrying capacity of the environment and thus is growing
    exponentially with intrinsic reproductive rate r (when it is not subject to environmental
    perturbations.), hence the name r-strategist.

    An extreme K-strategist lives in a stable environment which is not seriously affected by


    sudden, unpredictable effects. Thus the population of a K-strategist is near the carrying
    capacity K.

    Surviorship curves give us additional insight into r and K-


    selected strategies. Notice that the vertical axis of the
    survivorship plots is on a log scale and that horizontal axis is
    scaled to the maximum lifetime for each species.
    One of the interesting differences between r and K strategists is in the shape of the
    survivorship curve. We can generate a survivorship curve by ploting the log of the fraction
    of organisms surviving vs. the age of the organism. To compare different species,
    we normalize the age axis by stretching or shrinking the curve in the horizontal direction so
    that all curves end at the same point, the maximum life span for individuals of that species.
    Notice that the vertical axis is on a log scale, dropping from 1.0 (100%) to 0.1 (10%) to
    0.01 (1%) to 0.001 (0.1%) in equally spaced intervals.
    Extreme r-strategists, such as the oyster, lose most of the individuals very quickly, relative
    to the maximum life span for the species. But, a very few individuals do survive much
    longer than the rest. But, for extreme K-strategists, such as man, most individuals live to
    old age (again relative to the maximum life span for the species).

    These survivorship data are very valuable when studying the ecology of various organisms.
    Two components are involved in reproduction: 1) How many females survive to each
    age and 2) the average number of female offspring produced by females at each age. By
    using these data, we can compute the intrinsic rate of reproduction, r, a key parameter in
    models of population growth.
    This is the link to the first part of this information sheet:
    http://www.bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/16_rKselection.html

    This is the link to Slide Share page which has a super slide powerpoint for the ecology module, including the 2
    slides above:
    http://www.slideshare.net/smullen57/ib-biology-assessment-statements-unit-7-option-g

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