Racing through life: maturation rate plasticity regulates overcompensation and increases persistence

Induced changes in the demographic traits of harvested populations produce ecological responses to mortality that are not generally predicted by traditional models. Strong plasticity in maturation rates—commonly observed among intensely harvested populations—varies the time between birth and reproduction of an individual, thereby affecting a population's growth rate. We developed a general model to explore how density‐dependent maturation rates affect both population persistence and overcompensation, the situation in which population abundance increases in response to harvest. We find that plasticity in maturation rates generally dampens or eliminates overcompensation in populations. However stage‐specific harvest strategies, rather than those that target a population evenly, could elicit or strengthen an overcompensatory response. Therefore, occurrence of overcompensation in a species may be context‐dependent. Our results also demonstrate that faster maturation in response to harvest allows populations with low juvenile survival to persist under much greater harvest pressures and maintain higher levels of adult abundance than when maturation rates are not plastic. Strong compensatory responses in age at maturity can greatly amplify the harvest effort required to reduce or collapse populations with low survival rates. Accounting for this effect can be critical to invasive species control or eradication, as well as to the conservation of ecologically and/or economically important populations.