Life History Theory

Organizers

Prof. Christiaan Both (Conservation Ecology, GELIFES, RUG)
Dr. Corine Eising (RSEE)

Aim of the course

Life History Theory deals with species-specific adaptive schemes of the distribution of the reproductive effort over the life of an organism. The general theoretical problem is to predict which combination of traits will evolve under specific conditions. The concepts used are also relevant to study within species variation in life history traits. The one week course aims at giving an overview of the field and will discuss methodology and recent developments.

Contents & Structure

The subject will be worked out on the basis of lectures, case histories, discussion and literature. Attention will be paid to various groups of organisms such as birds, fishes, insects and plants. The contact with current research projects is guaranteed as concrete examples will be treated by scientists working in the field. In poster sessions work and/or plans of the participating students will be discussed with the whole group and we will use computers to illustrate some of the concepts.

Topics and Teachers:

Cost of reproduction and aging in a life history context (Simon Verhulst, GELIFES)

Life-history variation and population dynamics (Martijn van de Pol, NIOO)

Evolutionary genomics (Kees van Oers, NIOO)

Age and size at maturity (Tom van Dooren, CNRS, France)

We are very happy to announce that this year we will have two special guest lecturers: Jonathan Wright and Yimen Araya Ajoy (both of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway). Professor Wright is a behavioural ecologist who is an expert on the evolution of cooperation, parental care, parent-offspring conflict, cooperative breeding in birds. Dr Araya-Ajoy is particularly interested in the causes of variation in labile traits and its consequences on population dynamics.

Provisional Program:

Sunday 11 March 2018: Arrival, Registration and Dinner at the course venue, Field station the Herdershut, Schiermonnikoog, the Netherlands

19:45 h Arrival at the "Herdershut", simple meal, arrangement of lodging, short session on who is who

PLEASE NOTE: due to unforeseen circumstances we've had to change our programme. Therefore, a few titles and topics will be updated in the coming period.

Monday 12 March :

Tuesday 13 March :

Wednesday 14 March :

Thursday 15 March :

Friday 16 March ;

General Information