I still don’t understand which claim you’re making, exactly.
Are you saying:
1) “most animals don’t have as many offspring as was previously stated (mistakenly, based on the r-/K-selection model), and therefore we can’t be as sure that most animals live short and gruesome lives,”
or 2) “most animals don’t have as short a life span as was previously stated (mistakenly, based on the r-/K-selection model), and therefore we can’t be as sure that most animals live short and gruesome lives,”
or 3) something else?
I thought the claim about r-/K-selection was always about number of offspring and lifespan, rather than other aspects of the model (competition, body size, etc.), and your article doesn’t seem to suggest that these are very different from what was previously argued.
r-K selection theory suggests that some particular life history characteristics, such as short lifespan and many offspring, are tied together by selection forces. This is not true for some large groups.
Just because you belong to a group with high fecundity does not mean that either 1. total expected adult lifespan is relatively short or 2. that the highest mortality occurs at the youngest ages. For example, see our post on insect life history and in particular our reply to Tomisk regarding variability in survivorship curves.
I think we need to dig into the data to get stats on things like number of offspring. We are saying that not all species that people might describe as r-selected have many offspring, and it would be better to look at the data for different species or species groups than to use life history generalizations.
I still don’t understand which claim you’re making, exactly.
Are you saying:
1) “most animals don’t have as many offspring as was previously stated (mistakenly, based on the r-/K-selection model), and therefore we can’t be as sure that most animals live short and gruesome lives,”
or 2) “most animals don’t have as short a life span as was previously stated (mistakenly, based on the r-/K-selection model), and therefore we can’t be as sure that most animals live short and gruesome lives,”
or 3) something else?
I thought the claim about r-/K-selection was always about number of offspring and lifespan, rather than other aspects of the model (competition, body size, etc.), and your article doesn’t seem to suggest that these are very different from what was previously argued.
r-K selection theory suggests that some particular life history characteristics, such as short lifespan and many offspring, are tied together by selection forces. This is not true for some large groups.
Just because you belong to a group with high fecundity does not mean that either 1. total expected adult lifespan is relatively short or 2. that the highest mortality occurs at the youngest ages. For example, see our post on insect life history and in particular our reply to Tomisk regarding variability in survivorship curves.
I think we need to dig into the data to get stats on things like number of offspring. We are saying that not all species that people might describe as r-selected have many offspring, and it would be better to look at the data for different species or species groups than to use life history generalizations.
Thanks for the response!