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Summary: Life-history theory has long predicted that
the development time of organisms should
be positively associated with body size
and, ultimately, fitness. This admittedly
oversimplified view assumes that resource
quality remains constant through time. Of
course, this is not true; the relationship
must also be affected by changes in
resource quality, especially in seasonally
varying environments. In a community
context, one could predict that, during
periods of rapid environmental change,
organisms might not benefit from extended
development times. Alternatively, when
resource quality remains relatively static,
the original life-history predictions should
hold. Understanding the seasonal changes
in resource quality and determining
experimentally the genetic relationships
between life-history traits in a community of
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