According to recent empirical studies, reproductive senescence, the decline in reproductive
success with increasing age, seems to be nearly ubiquitous in the wild. However, a clear …

In fluctuating environments, mothers may enhance the fitness of their offspring by adjusting
offspring phenotypes to match the environment they will experience at independence. In free …

Background Our understanding of gut microbiota has been limited primarily to findings from
human and laboratory animals, but what shapes the gut microbiota in nature remains largely …

Animal personality is now frequently reported in wild and captive populations. It has been
shown to be moderately heritable and to have potentially important fitness consequences …

Personality affects many aspects of an individual's behaviour, life history and fitness, and
has been shown to be moderately heritable in wild populations. Correlations between …

The rate of adaptive evolution, the contribution of selection to genetic changes that increase
mean fitness, is determined by the additive genetic variance in individual relative fitness. To …

Evidence is accumulating that many marine ectotherms are undergoing rapid changes in
their life‐history characteristics. These changes have been variously attributed to fisheries …

The gut microbiome impacts host health and fitness, in part through the diversification of gut
metabolic function and pathogen protection. Elevations in glucocorticoids (GCs) appear to …

Consistent individual differences in behaviour, and behavioural correlations within and
across contexts, are referred to as animal personalities. These patterns of variation have …

Mast seeding involves the episodic and synchronous production of large seed crops by
perennial plants. The predator satiation hypothesis proposes that mast seeding maximizes …