Stephen Stearns introduced this term in proposing that variable juvenile mortality could explain why birds produce smaller clutches than Lack’s principle might suggest. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this term for strategies that decrease both arithmetic mean fitness and temporal variance in fitness.
ANSWER: bet-hedging [or word forms such as hedge bets]
[10e] Bet-hedging may underlie the delay in this process among dormant seeds. Horticulturists may promote this process using scarification or cold stratification.
ANSWER: germination [or word forms of germinate]
[10m] Among desert annuals, Jennifer Gremer and Larry Venable showed that competition alters the germination strategy that has this property. A strategy has this property when it resists invasion by any mutant strategy.
ANSWER: evolutionary stable strategy [or evolutionarily stable strategy; or evolutionary stability; ESS]
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