Variety Pays When Times Get Tough

摘要

In uncertain times, hedge your bets. That's what other species do, say Angela Crean and Dustin Marshall of the University of Queensland in St Lucia, Australia. Many species alter their reproductive strategy when food becomes scarce or other conditions change, but they were thought to change either towards fewer, larger offspring, or more smaller ones. The researchers re-examined five studies that showed such changes and found that in soil mites and damselfish clutches of eggs had actually become more varied, with both larger and smaller eggs (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/ rstb.2008.0237). "We think there will be dynamic bet hedging in many other species," says Crean.