The Rev Dodgson said:

esselte said:

SCIENCE said:

it can’t, it’s deity

Life history theory

The selection pressures that determine the reproductive strategy, and therefore much of the life history, of an organism can be understood in terms of r/K selection theory. The central trade-off to life history theory is the number of offspring vs. the timing of reproduction. Organisms that are r-selected have a high growth rate ® and tend to produce a high number of offspring with minimal parental care; their lifespans also tend to be shorter. r-selected organisms are suited to life in an unstable environment, because they reproduce early and abundantly and allow for a low survival rate of offspring. K-selected organisms subsist near the carrying capacity of their environment (K), produce a relatively low number of offspring over a longer span of time, and have high parental investment. They are more suited to life in a stable environment in which they can rely on a long lifespan and a low mortality rate that will allow them to reproduce multiple times with a high offspring survival rate….

K-selected organisms usually:

-mature more slowly and have a later age of first reproduction
-have a longer lifespan
-have few offspring at a time and more reproductive events spread out over a longer span of time
-have a low mortality rate and a high offspring survival rate
-have high parental investment

Also see r/K selection theory

That all makes sense for animals like elephants and humans, but I’m struggling to see how it could make a development period of 150 years the one that results in the greatest number of offspring who have offspring.

Evolution optimizes for the successful long term propagation of genes, not for maximum number of offspring. Imagine a 10 year old Greenland Shark has 100 babies with 1 percent survival rates, then it dies young leaving one offspring to continue propagating its genes. Compare that to a 150 year old shark which has 1 baby at 150 years, a second baby at 160 years etc, with all of those offspring surviving long enough to, themselves, have offspring.

FWIW from what I’m reading the Greenland shark is considered a very extreme case of K-type selection, which might be why it seems intuitively implausible.