r and K selection

Organisms that live in stable environments tend to make few,

"expensive" offspring. Organisms that live in unstable
environments tend to make many, "cheap" offspring.
Imagine that you are one of the many invertebrate organisms which existed during the
Cambrian or one of their descendents living today. Maybe you live in a tide pool which is
washed by waves. A storm appears on the horizon. The waves increase in height. You feel
yourself being dashed upon the rocks or into the mouth of a much larger and predatory
animal. Finally, you begin to see your brothers and sisters die, one by one, as the forces of
nature change your unpredictable environment.

If you could design a "strategy" to overcome the problems created by an unpredictable

environment, you would have two choices - go with the flow or cut and run to a more
stable environment.

Suppose you stayed. Then, one thing you could do would be to increase the number of
offspring. Make lots of cheap (requiring little energy investment) offspring instead of a few
expensive, complicated ones (requiring a lot of energy investment). If you lose a lot of
offspring to the unpredictable forces of nature, you still have some left to live to
reproductive age and pass on your genes to future generations. Many invertebrates follow
this strategy - lots of eggs are produced and larvae are formed but only a few survive to
produce mature, reproductive adults. Many insects and spiders also follow this strategy.

Alternatively, you could adapt to a more stable environment. If you could do that, you
would find that it would be worthwhile to make fewer, more expensive offspring. These
offspring would have all the bells and whistles necessary to ensure a comfortable,
maximally productive life. Since the environment is relatively stable, your risk of losing
offspring to random environmental factors is small. Large animals, such as ourselves,
follow this strategy.

Plants are also subject to the same sorts of forces as animals. Some live in unstable
environments such as a floodplain near a river or a gap in the forest caused by falling trees.
Others live in a quite stable environment, such as a climax forest.
The two evolutionary "strategies" are termed r-selection, for
those species that produce many "cheap" offspring and live in
unstable environments and K-selection for those species that
produce few "expensive" offspring and live in stable
environments.
Of course, the animal or plant is not thinking: "How do I change my characteristics?"
Natural selection is the force for change, not the individual's conscious decision. But,
natural selection has produced a gradation of strategies, with extreme r-selection at one end
of the spectrum and extreme K-selection at the other end.

The following table compares some characteristics of organisms which are extreme r or K
strategists:

r K
Stable environment, density dependent
Unstable environment, density independent
interactions
small size of organism large size of organism
energy used to make each individual is low energy used to make each individual is high
many offspring are produced few offspring are produced
late maturity, often after a prolonged period of
early maturity
parental care
short life expectancy long life expectancy
individuals can reproduce more than once in their
each individual reproduces only once
lifetime
type III survivorship pattern
type I or II survivorship pattern
in which most of the individuals die within a
in which most individuals live to near the maximum
short time
life span
but a few live much longer
The terms "r-selected" and "K-selected" come from a
description of the population growth regimes of the two types of
organisms.
If you are in an unstable environment, you are unlikely to ever have population growth to
the point where density dependent factors come into play. The population is still at low
values relative to the carrying capacity of the environment and thus is growing
exponentially with intrinsic reproductive rate r (when it is not subject to environmental
perturbations.), hence the name r-strategist.

An extreme K-strategist lives in a stable environment which is not seriously affected by

sudden, unpredictable effects. Thus the population of a K-strategist is near the carrying
capacity K.

Surviorship curves give us additional insight into r and K-

selected strategies. Notice that the vertical axis of the
survivorship plots is on a log scale and that horizontal axis is
scaled to the maximum lifetime for each species.
One of the interesting differences between r and K strategists is in the shape of the
survivorship curve. We can generate a survivorship curve by ploting the log of the fraction
of organisms surviving vs. the age of the organism. To compare different species,
we normalize the age axis by stretching or shrinking the curve in the horizontal direction so
that all curves end at the same point, the maximum life span for individuals of that species.
Notice that the vertical axis is on a log scale, dropping from 1.0 (100%) to 0.1 (10%) to
0.01 (1%) to 0.001 (0.1%) in equally spaced intervals.
Extreme r-strategists, such as the oyster, lose most of the individuals very quickly, relative
to the maximum life span for the species. But, a very few individuals do survive much
longer than the rest. But, for extreme K-strategists, such as man, most individuals live to
old age (again relative to the maximum life span for the species).

These survivorship data are very valuable when studying the ecology of various organisms.
Two components are involved in reproduction: 1) How many females survive to each
age and 2) the average number of female offspring produced by females at each age. By
using these data, we can compute the intrinsic rate of reproduction, r, a key parameter in
models of population growth.
This is the link to the first part of this information sheet:
http://www.bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/16_rKselection.html

This is the link to Slide Share page which has a super slide powerpoint for the ecology module, including the 2
slides above:
http://www.slideshare.net/smullen57/ib-biology-assessment-statements-unit-7-option-g