Meeting Abstract
Life-history theory is a cornerstone of modern evolutionary biology that addresses myriad phenomena ranging from demography and population structure to the evolution of ageing and senescence. Trade-offs may arise in a number of contexts, from allocation-based (e.g., egg size versus egg number) to genomic conflicts (e.g., intralocus sexual conflict in which genes that perform well in males perform poorly in females). Here I examine locomotor performance tradeoffs in human triathletes and show that swimming performance trades off with running and cycling performance. The tradeoff is plastic and trained versus untrained athletes experience the tradeoff differently. I use these patterns to motivate a study of performance tradeoffs in a natural wood frog system. Frogs experience both aquatic and terrestrial life stages over the course of their life history. However, “adaptive decoupling” of the life stages during metamorphosis may resolve the ontogenetic conflict that would otherwise constrain frogs to perform well either as tadpoles or as adults.
