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Updated: May 11, 2026

Measurement of Lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: January 7, 2013
The age-specific force of natural selection and biodemographic walls of death
Kenneth W Wachter1, Steven N Evans, David Steinsaltz
1Department of Demography, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2120, USA. wachter@demog.berkeley.edu
Abstract:
W. D. Hamilton's celebrated formula for the age-specific force of natural selection furnishes predictions for senescent mortality due to mutation accumulation, at the price of reliance on a linear approximation. Applying to Hamilton's setting the full nonlinear demographic model for mutation accumulation recently developed by Evans, Steinsaltz, and Wachter, we find surprising differences. Nonlinear interactions cause the collapse of Hamilton-style predictions in the most commonly studied case, refine predictions in other cases, and allow walls of death at ages before the end of reproduction. Haldane's principle for genetic load has an exact but unfamiliar generalization.
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