Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford St, Halifax, B3H 4R2, Canada.
Sharks of the Atlantic Research and Conservation Centre, 279 Portland Street, Dartmouth, B2Y 1K2, Canada.
Commun Biol. 2021 May 31;4(1):641. doi: 10.1038/s42003-021-02172-4.
Information about the survival of species is important in many ecological applications. Yet, the estimation of a species' natural mortality rate M remains a major problem in the management and conservation of wild populations, often circumvented by applying empirical equations that relate mortality to other traits that are more easily observed. We show that mean adult M can be approximated from the general law of decay if the average maximum age reached by individuals in a cohort is known. This is possible because the proportion P of individuals surviving to the average maximum age in a cohort is surprisingly similar across a wide range of examined species at 1.5%. The likely reason for the narrow range of P is a universal increase in the rate of mortality near the end of life, providing strong evidence that the evolutionary theories of ageing are the norm in natural populations.
有关物种生存的信息在许多生态学应用中都很重要。然而，估计物种的自然死亡率 M 仍然是野生动物种群管理和保护中的一个主要问题，通常通过应用经验方程来解决，这些方程将死亡率与其他更容易观察到的特征联系起来。我们表明，如果知道一个队列中个体达到的平均最大年龄，那么平均成年 M 可以从普遍的衰减规律中近似得到。这是可能的，因为在一个广泛的检查物种范围内，在一个队列中存活到平均最大年龄的个体的比例 P 惊人地相似，约为 1.5%。P 范围狭窄的可能原因是生命末期死亡率的普遍增加，这为衰老的进化理论是自然种群的常态提供了有力证据。
