Dimensionless numbers and the assembly rules for life histories

Abstract

This paper reviews recent efforts to use certain dimensionless numbers (DLNs) to classify life histories in plants and animals. These DLNs summarize the relation between growth, mortality and maturation, and several groups of animals show interesting patterns with respect to their numeric values. Finally we focus on one DLN, the product of the age of maturity and the adult instantaneous mortality, to show how evolutionary life history theory may be used to predict the value of the DLN, which differs greatly between major groups of animals.