A long life and lots of children—that was quite a common aspiration until not so long ago. But the world of animals reveals that high fertility and longevity are often mutually exclusive: Particularly animals with shorter lifespans are often very fertile while animals that live longer frequently produce fewer offspring. It seems that organisms with limited resources can be either long-lived or very fertile—but they can't be both at the same time. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön have now discovered how the trade-off between survival and fertility works. They have found that the average age at reproduction is a measure for the loss of fertility as life expectancy increases.
* This article was originally published here
