Talk:R/K selection theory

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[edit] J. Philipe Rushton

Just wondering if we need to mention Rushton here? While I can see that it's important for his article to link to this one, it's not obvious that the reverse is necessary. Especially as his work is described as pseudoscience here. Anyway, just thought that it might be better not to burden a science page with not-entirely-appropriate links. Anyone care to comment? --Plumbago 18:16, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I may be over-compensating for my POV here, but... I suppose his theories *are* notable, in the sense of being a popular-press commented upon application of r/K selection theory. In that case, maybe, if that article does a good job of describing why it is thought to be pseudo-science, it might be of some honest pedagogical value to direct readers there. I havn't read that article carefully (and don't really look to have much time to such a task), but I would feel a bit like a censor if I were to delete the link. I have a couple of comments from a review of Rushton's book by D.P. Barash published in journal Animal Behaviour (vol 49, pp1131-1133) which may serve as an indication of the main-stream biologists view of the theory. "...Rushton argues at length for what he calls the 'principle of aggregation', which in his hands, means the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit". "Bad science and virulent racial prejudice drip like pus from nearly every page of this despicable book". The review does delve into specific failings of his evidence in support of specific claims and is worth reading by anyone mulling-over Rushton's theory. Pete.Hurd 21:42, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Nice review! I'll have a look at that one (assuming our library's up to the task). As for censorship, yes, I am worried that my suggestion is tantamount to that. So I think the reference stays for now. I was originally thinking of removing the reference a) because it's irrelevant to r/K selection as a concept, and b) because, on the whole, my gut feeling is not to give any extra platform space to the likes of Rushton. Anyway, thanks for replying. Cheers, --Plumbago 09:04, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Went looking at the reference to r/K selection theory in Race, Evolution and Behavior, J. Philippe Rushton's controversial application of this theory to different human races, and could find none, so have deleted it as marginal to the topic John D. Croft 02:40, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Found it in 3 minutes on page 34 of Ruston's book here Mike Young (talk) 19:56, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge (February 2006)

Rather than have two separate forums for discussion, can we stick to Talk:R-K Life History Theory? I've started things off there. Cheers, --Plumbago 15:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Merged and redirected R-K Life History Theory to here. Have expanded it's portion on E. O. Wilson in this article. --Plumbago 09:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Copied my discussion on Talk:R-K Life History Theory to below :
This article is much more of a stub than R/K selection theory so should probably be merged into it. That said, it doesn't really contain anything extra, so a redirect might be better. The one extra thing it does introduce is attributing r-/K-selection to E. O. Wilson. I've had a quick check and apparently it stems back to a book by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson from the late 1960s ("The Theory of Island Biogeography"), which in turn stems from a joint paper of their's from 1963. If no-one objects, I'll re-direct this article as suggested, and add this information about MacArthur and Wilson to R/K selection theory. Cheers, --Plumbago 10:12, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I've just tracked down the 1963 paper, but it contains nothing about r/K. It's possible that the book does, but I've not got access to that to check. Anyone care to clarify this? --Plumbago 10:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Having now (finally) looked at Pianka (1970), it references MacArthur & Wilson's 1967 book as the source of r and K selection. I'll amend the R/K selection theory article appropriately, and merge this one into it. There's a snippet of the Pianka article available here. Cheers, --Plumbago 09:26, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that the Pianka reference also go into that second sentence along with the MacArthur & Wilson book. Pianka seems to be the classic citation, even if it is not the original source for the term. Cheers. Pete.Hurd 16:33, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Fair point. Maybe something like "... and was extended by ..."? --Plumbago 16:47, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RV expansion of Rushton's work explained

Rushton's work is very much outside the mainstream, and to present it without presenting the opposing view is tantamount to endorsing a POV. His theories, and the counter arguments, are well presented elsewhere. An uncritical presentation of his views here does not add to the understanding of r/K selection, and is intellectual dishonesty. Pete.Hurd 19:08, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

It's your job to add in the counterarguments, not to delete information you don't like. His work is certainly relevant since it is a notable application of r/K theory that has received widespread attention. What I wrote is cited and factual. Your blurb stating that it is rejected by "most biologists" is not. Dd2 20:44, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
No, it's not "my job" to add the counter arguments. You want to propagandize racist pseudoscience, fine. I'm not going to waste my time cutting and pasting the rebuttals from other pages into this one to "debate" your position. That's not how NPOV is supposed to work, as a back and forth propaganda battle. If you want to add coverage of this topic, then you should do it with intellectual honesty, and you should do it on the appropriate page. Pete.Hurd 21:33, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Re: Dd2 - It's certainly not a notable addition to r/K theory. It's a gross misapplication at best. Keep it on Rushton's page. There's enough about it here already. r/K is useful in proper ecology, it doesn't need tainting with Rushton's pseudoscience. A mention of him here is plenty enough. --Plumbago 08:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you. But Dd2 is right that the "most biologists" qualification is inappropriate per WP:WEASEL. bcasterline t 12:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi again. Dd2 - your new revision is fine by me. Thanks for responding to our concerns. Cheers, --Plumbago 08:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Related to this: editors may wish to note that I nominated Rushton's ordering of the human races for deletion for reasons explained on the article's AFD notice. Pete.Hurd 14:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adaptive capacity

I've removed the following from the article (but copied it here, and over at Adaptive Capacity). I'm not convinced that it helps articulate the general r/K theory. It seems to me that the concepts of r/K are used in Adaptive Capacity analogously to how they are used in ecology. Certainly the text below is unclear and confusing (and needs copyediting). I've moved adaptive capacity to a "See also" point. Not least because explaining the relevance of r/K for adaptive capacity might be best done there.

The Resilience Alliance, as illustrated by the work of C. S. Holling and L. H. Gunderson, shows how the logistic curve of the R phase positive feedback, becoming replaved by the K negative feedback strategy is an important part of adaptive capacity which is important in the survival of ecosystems and human social institutions. The R strategy is associated with situations of low complexity, high resilience, and growing potential. K strategies are associated with situations of high complexity, high potential and high resilience, but if the perturbations exceed certain limits, adaptive capactity may be exceeded and the system collapse into another so-called Omega state, of low potential, low complexity and low resilience.
  • Gunderson, L.H. and C.S. Holling, editors. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Island Press, Washington.

Of course, I could just be being dense, and haven't understood the relevance of the above! Cheers, --Plumbago 17:33, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Failed Search

I failed in my search for exactly this page when I entered "r/k". It wasn't in the first ten pages of results, presumably because the search engine ignores forward slashes. I found this page later by accident (while reading about semelparity on the reproduction page). The page should havebeen in the results, can you think of anything that can be done about that? -seth 189.162.17.16 05:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

A redirect at r/K to here would resolve this. I'll do this now. --Plumbago 07:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Bio-sexuality"?

I've removed the following statement from the article:

"The bio-sexuality of men tend to be r strategists, women tend more towards a K strategy."

Firstly, it's too human-specific - the purported r/K-strategist traits of men/women apply equally to other organisms (furthermore, since stable reproductive pairs of child-rearing humans are not uncommon, humans may not be a good example). Secondly, r/K is usually viewed as interspecific rather than intergender, but if there's a reliable source (scientific literature) to back this use that'd be great. Certainly, there's something to the idea that different strategies suit different genders, but my feeling is that we need good sources before inserting potentially contentious about human psychology into an article on ecology (c.f. J. Philippe Rushton). If it's original research, while it shouldn't be here, it might well make for a interesting paper!  :-) Cheers, --Plumbago 16:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I've just removed this again. Please supply some sources for this. Or at least discuss it here. Unsourced, it seems just like original research to me (which is only a criticism in that it can't be included here). Cheers, --Plumbago 07:48, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like a reference to Bateman's principle and the whole Trivers Parental investment shtick. If there are references in the literature explicitly relating the ideas, then they shouldn't be hard to dig up, but the one sentence standing alone doesn't do a very good job of explaining the idea... Pete.Hurd 13:55, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Ah-ha. Thanks Pete, that's the kind of information that I was looking for to start things off. I note, however, that the article on Bateman's principle doesn't draw any parallels with r/K selection. Unless we can find a good source for the link between the two that you mention, we're probably still in OR territory. If a source can't be found, then that confirms the OR tag and perhaps we all need to collaborate on a paper on it!  ;-) Cheers, --Plumbago 15:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Controversy not reflected here

This article seems to me misleading. r/K selection became highly controversial as early as the 1970's, and was long ago abandoned by most of those doing research in the evolution of life histories. If nothing else, see the review by Stearns in Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst.

There's certainly nothing wrong with discussing the theory, but since this is a work that will mainly be consulted by those outside of research in evolutionary biology, I don't think it's a good idea to represent the theory as one that's generally agreed upon. That's just not the case.

I've noticed that lately discussions of r/K selection have begun to appear in places like this, or in textbooks. Obviously you needn't agree with the many criticisms of the theory, but I do think it's misleading not to mention them. An interesting and useful article might address the history of the idea -- its life, death, and recent resurrection outside the research arena -- and reasons for that.

Gafox1 01:55, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Gafox1. Could you reproduce the full Stearns reference please? It not one I'm familiar with and I wouldn't mind a quick look at it (by way of a refresher). Regarding the "death" of r/K, well, that may be somewhat exaggerated. A quick trawl of the literature reveals that there are researchers out there using the concept (e.g. Caroli, L. et al., 2000, Zoo. Sci. 17, 209-216; Okada, H. et al., 2005, Nematology 7, 843-849; Hamer, A.J. et al., 2007, Aust. J. Zoo. 55, 79-88), but the relative paucity of hits suggests that you're generally correct (or that I can't search for toffee). It could just be that most researchers have found it too constricting a concept for the species they work on, and so have moved onto more fertile theoretical territory. However, as per the cites above, there are still workers out there who find it a useful concept. I should add that my own experience is in marine ecology, where most theoretical ecology concepts (including r- and K-strategist) don't get much of a look in! That said, I found quite a few aquatic hits in my trawl - suggesting that aquatic ecology is possibly catching up to terrestrial ecology from the 1970s; perhaps we'll ditch the concept in 10 years time!  ;-) --Plumbago 07:52, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


Here's the Stearns cite: Stearns, S. C. Evolution of life-history traits - critique of theory and a review of data. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 8: 145-171. This paper was very influential for 10 or 15 yrs -- for some time it was *the* standard reference for much about life history theory. That's not to say that it was the definitive work -- just that it was widely read and cited.

In addition to Stearns' criticism, it's worth asking two things about r/K theory. First, the theory was derived from logistic growth models, but a moment's thought will tell you that the derivative of the logistic equation with respect to both r and K is positive. In other words, there's no necessary trade-off in that model -- one must add other assumptions, usually ad hoc. Second, is r/K theory actually testable? If you go to look inside a population and study its evolution, how could you test it?

I've heard it said before by marine ecologists that marine ecology tends to be light on theory. Maybe it's true -- I don't get wet in my work, so can't say. All I'll say is that if you look at leading journals on ideas in evolutionary biology -- say, Evolution and Am. Nat., or others if you like -- you'll find that r/K theory hasn't inspired substantial work in a long time. It seems to have been resurrected lately because, well, it's a simple explanation for something that's complicated -- so it's made a reappearance in places like textbooks. My own view is that this is a bad thing: the theory doesn't work logically and it led to a real mess empirically; there are good reasons to discuss it as part of the history of science, but not as a currently viable theory.

By the way, you might also look at Derek Roff's book on life histories and their evolution. I don't recall what he says about r/K theory, but that's just the point -- it plays little role.

Cheers, Gordon Gafox1 00:28, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opportunistic / Equilibrium Populations

I was updating my class notes on the topic. Several references incorporate the terms opportunistic population and equilibrium populations into the general descriptions. I didn't see any reference to those terms here. It shows up in Campbell/Reese as well with those descriptors. Is anyone still invested in this article that wishes to work it in? --JimmyButler (talk) 00:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC) Here is an excellent reference if it needs a citation.

[1]

Two basic types of life strategies have been distinguished in eukaryotes. Populations that are subject to disturbances and thus grow in regular or erratic bursts are called opportunistic populations, whereas those which exist at more stable densities are termed equilibrium populations. Opportunistic populations typically grow fast, whereas equilibrium populations have a high competitive ability.http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_sig.png Your signature with timestamp

Hi JimmyButler. I've put a sentence in to mention these terms. I've used the reference you cite above (which mentions r- and K-selection shortly after the end of the quotation above). Is this OK? Cheers, --Plumbago (talk) 09:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Works for me. Thank you--JimmyButler (talk) 00:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)