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Demographic buffering of life histories? Implications of the choice of measurement scale
- Source :
- Ecology
- Publication Year :
- 2016
-
Abstract
- Life-history theory predicts that the vital rates that influence population growth the most should be buffered against environmental fluctuations due to selection for reduced variation. However, it remains unclear whether populations actually are influenced by such “demographic buffering,” because variation in vital rates can be compared on different measurement scales, and there has been little attempt to investigate whether the choice of scale influences the chance of detecting demographic buffering. We compared two statistical approaches to examine whether demographic buffering has influenced vital rates in wild Svalbard reindeer. To account for statistical variance constraints on vital rates limited between 0 and 1 in analyses of demographic buffering, one approach is to scale observed variation by the maximum possible variation on the arithmetic scale. When applying this approach, the results suggested that demographic buffering was occurring. However, when we applied an alternative approach that identified statistical variance constraints on the logit scale, there was no evidence for demographic buffering. Thus, the choice of measurement scale must be carefully considered before one can fully understand whether demographic buffering influences life histories. Defining the appropriate scale may require an understanding of the mechanisms through which demographic buffering may have evolved. © 2016 by the Ecological Society of America. This is the authors’ accepted and refereed manuscript to the article.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Male
Aging
Ecology
Scale (chemistry)
Logit
Population Dynamics
Statistical variance
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Models, Biological
010601 ecology
Measurement scales
Variation (linguistics)
Fertility
Research Design
Population growth
Animals
Female
Vital rates
Psychology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Reindeer
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Ecology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3a459d837f2b2dc154cd3d30adc8cd2e