Meeting Abstract
Whole-organism performance traits are key intermediaries between the organism and the environment. Because performance traits are energetically costly to both build and maintain, performance will compete with other life-history traits over a limited pool of acquired energetic resources at any given time, potentially leading to trade-offs in performance expression. Although these trade-offs can have important implications for organismal fitness we currently lack a conceptual framework for predicting both where trade-offs might be expected, and which traits may be especially prone to trade-offs with other fitness-related life-history traits. We propose such a framework based on the energetic requirements of locomotion in vertebrates. By analysing existing data on vertebrate metabolic rates, aerobic capacities, and life-history traits, we test for patterns in energetic profiles that are predictive of key life-history relationships. We also discuss the potential implications of endothermy and ectothermy for masking such relationships, and how this framework might be expanded upon in the future.
