Time and Chance: Using Age Partitioning to Understand How Luck Drives Variation in Reproductive Success

AbstractOver the course of individual lifetimes, luck usually explains a large fraction of the between-individual variation in life span or lifetime reproductive output (LRO) within a population, while variation in individual traits or "quality" explains much less. To understand how, where in the life cycle, and through which demographic processes luck trumps trait variation, we show how to partition by age the contributions of luck and trait variation to LRO variance and how to quantify three distinct components of luck. We apply these tools to several empirical case studies. We find that luck swamps effects of trait variation at all ages, primarily because of randomness in individual state dynamics ("state trajectory luck"). Luck early in life is most important. Very early state trajectory luck generally determines whether an individual ever breeds, likely by ensuring that they are not dead or doomed quickly. Less early luck drives variation in success among those breeding at least once. Consequently, the importance of luck often has a sharp peak early in life or it has two peaks. We suggest that ages or stages where the importance of luck peaks are potential targets for interventions to benefit a population of concern, different from those identified by eigenvalue elasticity analysis.