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Evolutionary demographic models for mortality plateaus.

K W Wachter1

  • 1Departments of Demography and Statistics, University of California, 2232 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94720-2120, USA. wachter@demog.berkeley.edu

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|September 1, 1999
PubMed
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Mortality plateaus observed in aging populations are not predicted by evolutionary demographic models as limiting states. Transient states in these models, however, do exhibit mortality plateaus.

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Demography
  • Mathematical modeling

Background:

  • Observed mortality plateaus at extreme ages in diverse species (medflies, Drosophila, nematodes, humans).
  • Mueller and Rose's age-structured demographic models propose evolutionary mechanisms (mutation accumulation, antagonistic pleiotropy) predicting late-life mortality plateaus.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To define a class of Markovian models encompassing Mueller and Rose's models.
  • To characterize the limiting states of these demographic models.
  • To investigate the theoretical underpinnings of observed late-life mortality patterns.

Main Methods:

  • Definition of a class of Markovian age-structured demographic models.
  • Analysis of model properties, focusing on limiting states.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Comparison of model predictions with empirical observations of mortality plateaus.

    • Main Results:

    • For the basic model, mortality plateaus above a minimal threshold are not limiting states.
    • The proposed models, in their basic form, do not fully explain persistent mortality plateaus as limiting states.
    • Transient states within the models do exhibit mortality plateaus.

    Conclusions:

    • The theoretical models of Mueller and Rose, while influential, do not predict late-life mortality plateaus as stable limiting states.
    • The failure of the basic model is not due to previously conjectured reasons.
    • Further exploration of related models may reconcile evolutionary theory with observed mortality patterns in aging populations.