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Cited by 254

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Generation Time: A Reliable Metric to Measure Life‐History Variation among Mammalian Populations

Gaillard, J.‐M., Yoccoz, N. G., Lebreton, J.‐D., Bonenfant, C., Devillard, S., Loison, A., Pontier, D., Allaine, D.·2005·The American Naturalist
DOI 10.1086/430330
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Abstract

Oli and Dobson proposed that the ratio between the magnitude and the onset of reproduction (F/ alpha ratio) allows one to predict the relative importance of vital rates on population growth rate in mammalian populations and provides a reliable measure of the ranking of mammalian species on the slow-fast continuum of life-history tactics. We show that the choice of the ratio F/ alpha is arbitrary and is not grounded in demographic theory. We estimate the position on the slow-fast continuum using the first axis of a principal components analysis of all life-history variables studied by Oli and Dobson and show that most individual vital rates perform as well as the F/ alpha ratio. Finally, we find, in agreement with previous studies, that the age of first reproduction is a reliable predictor of the ranking of mammalian populations along the slow-fast continuum and that both body mass and phylogeny markedly influence the generation time of mammalian species. We conclude that arbitrary ratios such as F/ alpha correlate with life-history types in mammals simply because life-history variables are highly correlated in response to allometric, phylogenetic, and environmental influences. We suggest that generation time is a reliable metric to measure life-history variation among mammalian populations and should be preferred to any arbitrary combination between vital rates.

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Metadata

Authors
Gaillard, J. ‐., Yoccoz, N. G., Lebreton, J. ‐., Bonenfant, C., Devillard, S., Loison, A., Pontier, D., & Allaine, D.
Venue
The American Naturalist
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Published
2005-07
Volume
166
Issue
1
Pages
119-123
ISSN
  • 0003-0147 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5323
DOI
10.1086/430330
OpenAlex
W2007285556
Cited by
254
References
24
FWCI
7.41
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Generation Time: A Reliable Metric to Measure Life‐History Variation among Mammalian Populations. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/430330
The paper
Gaillard, J. ‐., Yoccoz, N. G., Lebreton, J. ‐., Bonenfant, C., Devillard, S., Loison, A., Pontier, D., & Allaine, D. (2005). Generation Time: A Reliable Metric to Measure Life‐History Variation among Mammalian Populations. The American Naturalist. https://doi.org/10.1086/430330

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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