Abstract Even though individual life history is the focus of much ecological research, its importance for the dynamics and structure of ecological communities is unclear, or is it a topic of much ongoing research. In this paper I highlight the key life history traits that may lead to effects of life history or ontogeny on ecological communities. I show that asymmetries in the extent of food limitation between individuals in different life stage can give rise to an increase in efficiency with which resources are used for population growth when conditions change. This change in efficiency may result in a positive relationship between stage‐specific density and mortality. The positive relationship between density and mortality in turn leads to predictions about community structure that are not only diametrically opposite to the expectations based on theory that ignores population structure but are also intuitively hard to accept. I provide a few examples that illustrate how taking into account intraspecific differences due to ontogeny radically changes the theoretical expectations regarding the possible outcomes of community dynamics. As the most compelling example I show how a so‐called double‐handicapped looser, that is, a consumer species that is both competitively inferior in the absence of predators and experiences higher mortality when predators are present, can nonetheless oust its opponent that it competes with for the same resource and is exposed to the same predator.

中文翻译：

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生活史和个体发展对社区动态的影响：对违反直觉后果的回顾

摘要 尽管个体生活史是许多生态学研究的重点，但其对生态群落动态和结构的重要性尚不清楚，或者是许多正在进行的研究的主题。在本文中，我重点介绍了可能导致生活史或个体发育对生态群落产生影响的关键生活史特征。我表明，不同生命阶段个体之间食物限制程度的不对称可以提高资源在条件变化时用于人口增长的效率。这种效率的变化可能会导致特定阶段的密度和死亡率之间存在正相关关系。密度和死亡率之间的正相关关系反过来导致对群落结构的预测，不仅与基于忽略人口结构的理论的预期截然相反，而且在直觉上也难以接受。我提供了一些例子，说明考虑到个体发育引起的种内差异如何从根本上改变关于社区动态可能结果的理论预期。作为最有说服力的例子，我展示了一个所谓的“双残松鼠”，即一种在没有捕食者的情况下在竞争中处于劣势而在有捕食者存在时死亡率更高的消费物种，仍然可以将它的对手赶下台。使用相同的资源并暴露于相同的捕食者。