Bioen Maturation

Maturation

Age and size at maturation vary strongly between individuals due to phenotypic plasticity. This plasticity in maturation is modeled by a deterministic linear maturation reaction norm (LMRN) that represents all the age-length combinations at which an individual can become mature (Ste92,SK86). In this framework, individuals become sexually mature when their growth trajectory in term of body length intersects the LMRN, so that the maturity status of individuals of school at time step is then described as:

$$ m(i,t) = \begin{cases} 0 & \text{if $L(i,t) < m_0(i) + m_1(i) a(i,t)$ (immature)} \\ 1 & \text{if $L(i,t) \geq m_0(i) + m_1(i) a(i,t)$ (mature)} \end{cases} $$

with $m_0(i)$ and $m_1(i)$ the intercept and slope of the LMRN, respectively.

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Ste92 Stephen C Stearns. The evolution of life histories. Volume 249. Oxford university press Oxford, 1992.

SK86 Stephen C Stearns and Jacob C Koella. The evolution of phenotypic plasticity in life-history traits: predic- tions of reaction norms for age and size at maturity. Evolution, 40(5):893–913, 1986.