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Report of visit Konstadia Lika

reported by Bas Kooijman.

Konstadia Lika (Dept of Biology, University of Crete) visited the Dept. of Theoretical Biology of the Vrije Universiteit (22-27 March 1999) within the framework of the NWO priority program NLS. She worked for 6 years with Tom Hallam (Knoxville, Tennessee), and 2 years with Roger Nisbet (Santa Barbara, California), on Dynamic Energy Budgets of the production type. In this class of models, maintenance requirements are first subtracted from assimilation, before allocation to growth and/or reproduction. Kooijman is working on assimilation models, where assimilation feeds a buffer that is subsequently used for maintenance, development, growth and reproduction. She will talk about this work in the coming TMBM99 conference in Amsterdam. She worked with Kooijman on the comparison of reproduction in animals that sport determinate or indeterminate growth. The topic originated from Roger Nisbet, who suggested that animals that allocate a constant fraction of energy made available from reserves to maintenance plus growth (standard assumption in DEB model), would soon be out-competed by animals that first grow and then reproduce. The analyses by Like and Kooijman show that this is not true; the reverse is to be expected in practice. They are working on a paper with the following provisional title:
Life history implications of allocation to growth versus reproduction in Dynamic Energy Budgets

Abstract: We compare the implications of determinate versus indeterminate growth of a parthenogenetic iteroparous ectotherm at constant food density in the context of the Dynamic Energy Budget theory, which specifies the tight links between life history traits, such as feeding, aging, growth and reproduction. The allocation of a constant fraction of the catabolic power to somatic maintenance and growth leads to a higher life span reproduction and a longer life span, while a bang-bang allocation leads to a higher reproduction just after maturation, and a higher population growth rate. We suggest an evolutionary link between allocation strategies and expected life span.


next up previous contents
Next: Calendar Up: nls-99-2.html Previous: Report on the minisymposium

Bob Kooi
Tue Aug 10 12:25:42 MET DST 1999