It’s mostly a matter of not dying,” says Stephen Ellner, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. Ellner and Robin Snyder, associate professor of biology at Case Western Reserve University, are coauthors of the paper in American Naturalist. 

Funding for the pair’s research came from National Science Foundation grants. Read the article here: http://www.futurity.org/reproduction-success-luck-survival-1694112/