Word.ws English Dictionary

r/K selection theory

r/K selection theory noun: a theory regarding the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that represent a trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring.

Noun

r/K selection theory (uncountable)

  1. A theory regarding the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that represent a trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring.

Origin of r/K selection theory

Coined by the American ecologists Robert H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson in 1967. The choice of the letter K came from the German Kapazitätsgrenze (“capacity limit”), while r came from rate.

Questions about r/K selection theory

What does r/K selection theory mean?
R/K selection theory means a theory regarding the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that represent a trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring.
What part of speech is r/K selection theory?
R/K selection theory is a noun.

Words near r/K selection theory in the dictionary

  1. R.V.s
  2. R/C
  3. R/Cs
  4. R/H
  5. R/Hr
  6. r/K selection theory
  7. r/o
  8. R/P
  9. R/S
  10. R/T
  11. R/V

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: r/K selection theory (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “r/K selection theory.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/r%2Fk_selection_theory. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.