PMC

a) Scenarios differ in mean food availability – dark line high mean, pale line low mean; b) Scenarios differ in the duration food availability (food availability window), dark line low variance, pale line high variance; c) Scenarios differ in the timing of food availability.

The method calculates how a population would have performed with the focal individual removed over the time step t to t+1, and it is implemented by retrospectively removing the individual and any offspring that produced between t to t+1 that are still alive at t+1 and recalculating population growth (see section 'Fitness').

Coefficients of linear mixed effects models of individuals per phenotype (dependent variable). The model structure included total prey availability (mean), window of prey availability (var), as fixed effects, peak week of prey availability during the breeding season (peak2 ..., peak6) as fixed factor, and year as a random effect. For details regarding the statistical analysis see section 'Statistical analysis' and Supplement 3.

(b) No space - the environment consist of a single cell. (c) No phenotype transitions (all offspring inherits parent’s phenotype). (d) No time-specific productivity- all prolific phenotypes produce 7 while all non-prolific phenotypes produce 5 phenotype-specific offspring per year. Outputs for the different model complexity levels were normalised against the values of each phenotype in the 'normal' model output. Values are given as a % of the difference between: [(simpler model - normal model) / normal model] outputs per phenotype.

(b-g) Boxplots of (b) Early Prolific, (c) Early non-Prolific, (d) Mid Prolific, (e) Mid non-Prolific, (f) Late Prolific, and (g) Late non-Prolific phenotypes across all simulation scenarios. Values in vertical axis are individuals per phenotype, horizontal axis depicts total food availability followed by window of food availability per simulation (see 'Initialization' for a full description of simulation scenarios). Horizontal lines within boxplots depict mean values, the top of the box is the third quartile Q3 (75% of the data values are less than or equal to this value) the bottom of the box is the first quartile Q1 (B25% of the data values). The upper whisker extends to the highest data value within Q3 + 1.5 (Q3 - Q1). The lower whisker extends to the lowest value within Q1 -1.5 (Q3 - Q1).