Evolutionary Demography

Evolutionary demography has grown rapidly in recent years, as the biological topics of life history evolution and evolution in population with complex life cycles have benefitted from and contributed to a broader focus on evolutionary biodemography. This chapter provides a critical summary of the central ideas and methods. The authors emphasise theoretical methods, starting with the main ideas that have attracted attention in the field, the assumptions behind these, and efforts to relax those assumptions, and provide a short account of some new directions. The chapter begins with the classic work of Peter Medawar and William Hamilton and discusses the connections, applications, assumptions, and limitations related to their ideas and results, e.g. sensitivity and corresponding elasticity of growth rate on fertility and survival. It highlights extensions to variable environments and the large body of theory around that topic. Next the chapter discusses how these theoretical methods are related to analyses and theories of post-reproductive life, via the general concept of ‘borrowing fitness’. Finally, the chapter discusses nonlinear models of mutation and selection and density-dependent models.