In most environments, bacteria reside primarily in biofilms, which are social consortia of cells
that are embedded in an extracellular matrix and undergo developmental programmes …

Parents affect offspring fitness by propagule size and quality, selection of oviposition site,
quality of incubation, feeding of dependent young, and their defence against predators and …

The distance travelled by marine larvae varies by seven orders of magnitude. Dispersal
shapes marine biodiversity, and must be understood if marine systems are to be well …

Recent syntheses on the evolutionary causes of dispersal have focused on dispersal as a
direct adaptation, but many traits that influence dispersal have other functions, raising the …

When provisioning offspring, mothers balance the benefits of producing a few large, fitter
offspring with the costs of decreased fecundity. The optimal balance between offspring size …

Mothers in a range of taxa manipulate the phenotype of their offspring in response to
environmental change in order to maximize their own fitness. Most studies have focused on …

Matrotrophy, the continuous extra‐vitelline supply of nutrients from the parent to the progeny
during gestation, is one of the masterpieces of nature, contributing to offspring fitness and …

Biologists have long sought to identify and explain patterns in the diverse array of marine life
histories. The most famous speculation about such patterns is Gunnar Thorson's suggestion …

Offspring size is strikingly variable within species. Although theory can account for variation
in offspring size among mothers, an adaptive explanation for variation within individual …

The survival probability of birds during the juvenile period, between the end of parental care
and adulthood, is highly variable and has a major effect on population dynamics and …