The relevance of life history theory to harvest and conservation

Abstract

“Life history theory” and “applied ecology” are two disciplines that together span much of the field of natural science. The first seeks to understand the basic patterns underlying the diversity of life cycles, whereas the second seeks to guide our interactions with nature. In this paper I have concentrated on how life history theory relates to “harvest” and “conservation” of wildlife. Life history theory has the possibility to help make some general predictions about the interrelationship between demographic life history traits and interests of management and conservation. Theoretically it can therefore be used as a predictive tool which might allow us to extrapolate data from well-studied species to poorly-studied species with similar life history traits. However, life history theory has concentrated on broad patterns at scales that involve many different taxa, and has so far not always been successful in explaining the patterns that occur at finer taxonomic scales. Nevertheless, applied ecology would be a far more mature science if it had a greater contribution from life history theory. There are obviously a finite number of general patterns of life history variation which can be used to make general predictions. However, successful management will also need a better understanding of species in context of communities and ecosystems. We have to handle harvest and conservation on several levels of organisation simultaneously. Perhaps conducting in situ studies with a life history perspective will ultimately allow us to make more reliable predictions at a lower level of scale than is possible today. Furthermore, management actions could be treated as ecological experiments. This will not only help the managers understand the process of research, it will also provide many more tests of hypotheses with potential value for applied ecology.