Life History Across Domains

Recent work has identified new rules of life that impact the maintenance of biodiversity. These rules depends on the interaction of life history, the schedule of when and how fast organisms grow, die and reproduce, with competition for resources. The purpose of this working group is to bring together different researchers whose work touches on some aspect of life history, or its mathematical implications, and thereby identify new research avenues and new connections between them. We will both drill down deeper into biological mechanism and data, while at the same time looking outward, to the role of life history across complex systems. Areas where analogs of life history play a key role include (but are not limited to) intracellular dynamics, cultural transmission, epidemiology, and the dynamics of firms. We will kick-start this network by assembling a vibrant working group of collaborators, spanning these fields, in addition to multiple areas of ecology and evolutionary biology. This group will contribute theoretical insights and plan new empirical data collection, catalyzing new ways of thinking about life history across these multiple domains. The outcome will be the development of a long-term vision for the role of life history across complex systems.