Three axes of life history strategies to rule them all

All species are faced with the same dilemma: how to invest limiting resources into survival, development, and reproduction in a way that maximises their fitness? Classical efforts in life history theory to classify and predict species properties based on this dilemma have led to the widely accepted “fast-slow continuum” as the leading axis of life history variation. Here, I will discuss recent developments in my group, which encompass variation along key moments in the reproductive strategies of organisms, and how individual vital rates vary through time as a response to the environment. I will introduce a three-dimensional “period table of the elements”, strongly founded on life history theory, and discuss its predictive abilities.