ABSTRACT
Any higher organism must at some time allocate time and resources to reproduction in order to be represented by its genes in following generation. An individual's fitness is measured by the proportion of offspring in the next generation the individual contributes to. The optimal energy allocation to reproduction at any given time, is therefore a tradeoff between the benefit in terms of number of offspring produced and the cost in terms of survival; to future breeding attempts (Williams, 1966; Stearns, 1992; Schaffer, 2004; Stevenson and Woods, 2006). Two basic questions face organism in regard to this trade-off (1) At what age shall the individual mature? and (2) If an individual decides to reproduce,
C H A P T E R
what proportion of available resources is allocated to each reproductive attempt and to each individual offspring. There is a multitude of factors, each with its set of trade-offs, that determines the individual choice in these questions.
