We can't afford to prolong so many hopeless lives

Organisms must balance energy intake with the energy required for growth, maintenance, and reproduction. These trade-offs result in a variety of survivorship and reproductive strategies, including semelparity and iteroparity. Semelparous species reproduce only once in their lifetime, often investing most available resources into that single reproductive event. Iteroparous species, by contrast, reproduce multiple times over their lifetimes, typically allocating fewer resources to any single...