Life History Evolution

Lecture Description

Life history covers three main classes of traits in organisms: age and size at maturity, number and size of offspring, and lifespan and reproductive investment. Organisms must make tradeoffs among these traits that typically cause them to come to evolutionary equilibrium at intermediate values. Life history traits are evolutionary solutions to the ecological problems of the risk of mortality and the acquisition of food, and they are expressed in reaction norms that determine the particular traits that an organism will exhibit when its genes encounter a specific environment during development.

Course Description

This course presents the principles of evolution, ecology, and behavior for students beginning their study of biology and of the environment. It discusses major ideas and results in a manner accessible to all Yale College undergraduates. Recent advances have energized these fields with results that have implications well beyond their boundaries: ideas, mechanisms, and processes that should form part of the toolkit of all biologists and educated citizens.

Course Index

1. The Nature of Evolution: Selection, Inheritance, and History
2. Basic Transmission Genetics
3. Adaptive Evolution: Natural Selection
4. Neutral Evolution: Genetic Drift
5. How Selection Changes the Genetic Composition of Population
6. The Origin and Maintenance of Genetic Variation
7. The Importance of Development in Evolution
8. The Expression of Variation: Reaction Norms
9. The Evolution of Sex
10. Genomic Conflict
11. Life History Evolution
12. Sex Allocation
13. Sexual Selection
14. Species and Speciation
15. Phylogeny and Systematics
16. Comparative Methods: Trees, Maps, and Traits
17. Key Events in Evolution
18. Major Events in the Geological Theatre
19. The Fossil Record and Life's History
20. Coevolution
21. Evolutionary Medicine
22. The Impact of Evolutionary Thought on the Social Sciences
23. The Logic of Science
24. Climate and the Distribution of Life on Earth
25. Interactions with the Physical Environment
26. Population Growth: Density Effects
27. Interspecific Competition
28. Ecological Communities
29. Island Biogeography and Invasive Species
30. Energy and Matter in Ecosystems
31. Why So Many Species? The Factors Affecting Biodiversity
32. Economic Decisions for the Foraging Individual
33. Evolutionary Game Theory: Fighting and Contests
34. Mating Systems and Parental Care
35. Alternative Breeding Strategies
36. Selfishness and Altruism