Controls on the limits of life history strategies and senescence

Thesis

In this thesis I explore our ability to measure and explain longevity, generation time, and actuarial senescence using different components of the environment and physiology and data structures. First, I take a bottom-up approach, interrogating the degree to which plant lifespan and actuarial senescence can be predicted mechanistically by anatomical features allied with a key cause of plant mortality. Second, I take a top-down approach, interrogating the degree to which environmental drivers of survival can explain observed lifespan, generation time, and reproductive delay. Third, I explore whether lifespan and generation time can be used to estimate unobserved vital rates using population time series and partial information about vital rates. Fourth, in acknowledgment of the data gaps that restrict our ability to fully understand the degree to which environmental or intrinsic factors structure demographic diversity, I develop a database of traits that can improve the types of demographic questions that we analyse and to improve the standardization, accessibility, and scrutiny of trait data underlying comparative demographic analysis. The appended materials reflect my contributions toward establishing a new metric of Keyfitz’ entropy (a measure of actuarial senescence), toward writing a review of the state of the art of demographic senescence, and in researching challenges in the standardization of structured population models.

Authors: Bernard, C

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-wrd0mwa9d
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English