Individuals' expected genetic contributions to future generations, reproductive value, and short-term metrics of fitness in free-living song sparrows (Melospiza melodia).

ABSTRACT: Appropriately defining and enumerating "fitness" is fundamental to explaining and predicting evolutionary dynamics. Yet, general theoretical concepts of fitness are often hard to translate into quantities that can be measured in wild populations experiencing complex environmental, demographic, genetic, and selective variation. Although the "fittest" entities might be widely understood to be those that ultimately leave most descendants at some future time, such long-term legacies can rarely be measured, impeding evaluation of the degree to which tractable short-term metrics of individual fitness could potentially serve as useful direct proxies. One opportunity for conceptual and empirical convergence stems from the principle of individual reproductive value (V _i), here def

SUBMITTER: Reid JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6546383 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature