When the going gets tough, the tough get going: effect of extreme climate on an Antarctic seabird’s life history

Abstract

1Individuals differ in many ways. Most produce few offspring; a handful produce many. Some die early; others live to old age. It is tempting to attribute these differences in out-comes to differences in individual traits, and thus in the demographic rates experienced. However, there is more to individual variation than meets the eye of the biologist. Even among individuals sharing identical traits, life history outcomes will vary due to individual stochasticity, i.e., to chance. Quantifying the contributions of heterogeneity and chance is essential to understanding natural variability. Inter-individual differences vary across environmental conditions. Heterogeneity and stochasticity depend on environmental conditions. We show that favorable conditions increase the contributions of individual stochasticity, and reduce the contributions of heterogeneity, to variance in demographic outcomes in a seabird population. The opposite is true under poor conditions. This result has important consequence for understanding the ecology and evolution of life history strategies.