Abstract
There is a deep connection between population dynamics and life history, since populations are comprised of individuals. ‘Population dynamics’ refers to a time series of population size (and structure). ‘Life history’ refers to the timing of ‘key events’ across the life cycle of individuals. Population projection matrices can be decomposed into a sum of two matrices, one for single time-step fates of already existing individuals and another for single time-step production of new individuals. Matrices are clearly related to age-specific survivorship and fertility schedules of life tables, directly for age-structured populations and through Markov chain analysis for stage-structured populations.