Q.Organisms breed only once in their lifetime.

Pacific salmon and bamboo are classic semelparous organisms that breed once and then die.

Organisms differ in how often they reproduce during their life span:

• SEMELPARITY (big-bang reproduction): reproduce only once, investing everything in a single massive breeding event, then die. Examples given in NCERT are the Pacific salmon fish and bamboo species (which flower once, set seed, and die). …

Insects are classic r-selected species: they reproduce rapidly, produce many offspring, and rely on numbers rather than parental investment.

Ecologists classify life-history strategies along an r-K continuum. r-selected species thrive in unstable/unpredictable environments by maximising their intrinsic rate of increase (r): they are typically small, short-lived, mature quickly, and produce numerous offspring with minimal parental care, so population size fluctuates but numbers can rebound fast -- insects are a textbook example. K-selected species, by contrast, live in relatively stable environments near carrying capacity (K): they are typically lar …