Practice question

“High fecundity reduces lifespan” for the trade-off between fecundity and survival suggests. This relationship follows from the ecological mechanism represented by the terms in the item, not merely from an association between their names. Survivorship curves summarize age-specific mortality: Type I concentrates loss late in life, Type II approximates a constant hazard, and Type III concentrates loss early. They are empirical patterns, not rigid taxonomic rules. The remaining alternatives—“High reproduction = long life”, “More survival = less reproduction”, “Long life increases fecundity”—refer to different states, processes, or scales and therefore do not express the same causal relationship. Selection favors the schedule that increases lifetime reproductive success under local mortality and resource conditions. Body size, development time, fecundity, parental investment, and generation length consequently tend to covary. Field observations could test this account by measuring the proposed driver and the demographic or ecosystem response while controlling plausible confounding factors.