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The Construction, Description and Analysis of Age-specific Life-tables

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Ecological Methods

Abstract

The construction of a number of life-tables is an important component in the understanding of the population dynamics of a species. Although some animal ecologists, such as Richards (1940), had expressed their results showing the successive reductions in the population of an insect throughout a single generation, Deevey (1947) was really the first to focus attention on the importance of this approach. Life-tables have long been used by actuaries for determining the expectation of life of an applicant for insurance and thus the column indicating the expectation of life at a given age (the e x column) is an essential feature of human life-tables. However, the fundamental interests of the ecologist and, even more so, of the economic entomologist are essentially different from those of the actuary and it is a mistake to believe that these approaches and parameters of primary interest in the study of human populations are also those of greatest significance to the animal ecologist. Because many insects have discrete generations and their populations are not stationary, the age-specific life-table is more widely applicable than the time- specific life-table.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, UK

    T. R. E. Southwood Kt, D.SC., PH.D., F.R.S. (Linacre Proffesor of Zoology)

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  1. T. R. E. Southwood Kt, D.SC., PH.D., F.R.S.
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© 1978 T. R. E. Southwood

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Southwood, T.R.E. (1978). The Construction, Description and Analysis of Age-specific Life-tables. In: Ecological Methods. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1225-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1225-0_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-412-30710-2

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