The adequacy of aging techniques in vertebrates for rapid estimation of population mortality rates from age distributions

Ecology and Evolution
Meijuan ZhaoMarcel Klaassen

Abstract

As a key parameter in population dynamics, mortality rates are frequently estimated using mark-recapture data, which requires extensive, long-term data sets. As a potential rapid alternative, we can measure variables correlated to age, allowing the compilation of population age distributions, from which mortality rates can be derived. However, most studies employing such techniques have ignored their inherent inaccuracy and have thereby failed to provide reliable mortality estimates. In this study, we present a general statistical model linking birth rate, mortality rate, and population age distributions. We next assessed the reliability and data needs (i.e., sample size) for estimating mortality rate of eight different aging techniques. The results revealed that for half of the aging techniques, correlations with age varied considerably, translating into highly variable accuracies when used to estimate mortality rate from age distributions. Telomere length is generally not sufficiently correlated to age to provide reliable mortality rate estimates. DNA methylation, signal-joint T-cell recombination excision circle (sjTREC), and racemization are generally more promising techniques to ultimately estimate mortality rate, if a suf...Continue Reading

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Citations

Aug 25, 2020·Global Change Biology·Pablo BurracoNeil B Metcalfe

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