Predicting Natural Mortality Rates and Reproduction–Mortality Trade-offs from Fish Life History Data

A method for estimating natural mortality and evolutionary constraint on fish life histories is presented based on the assumption that observed life histories are evolutionarily stable. Inverse optimization techniques are used to determine the values of natural mortality, reproduction–mortality trade-offs, and energy conversion efficiencies that would make observed life histories evolutionarily stable. The life history method yields natural mortality estimates comparable with those based on population age–frequency data. Sensitivity analysis is used to determine the robustness of the predictions to errors in parameter estimation and density-dependent factors.

[1]  R. Myers.  Demographic Consequences of Precocious Maturation of Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) , 1984 .

[2]  D. Roff.  The Evolution of Life History Parameters in Teleosts , 1984 .

[3]  Roger W. Doyle,et al.  An approach to the quantitative analysis of domestication selection in aquaculture , 1983 .

[4]  R. Myers,et al.  Predictions of seasonal natural mortality rates in a copepod population using life-history theory , 1983 .

[5]  R. Myers,et al.  The Measurement of the Direct and Indirect Intensities of Natural Selection , 1982 .

[6]  Brian Charlesworth,et al.  Evolution in Age-Structured Populations , 1981 .

[7]  D. Pauly.  Theory and management of tropical multispecies stocks: a review, with emphasis on the Southeast Asian demersal fisheries , 1979 .

[8]  M. Landry.  Population Dynamics and Production of a Planktonic Marine Copepod,. Acartia clausii, in a Small Temperate Lagoon on San Juan Island, Washington , 1978 .

[9]  J. Gillespie.  Natural Selection for Variances in Offspring Numbers: A New Evolutionary Principle , 1977, The American Naturalist.

[10]  Daniel H. Janzen,et al.  Why Bamboos Wait So Long to Flower , 1976 .

[11]  J. M. Smith.  The theory of games and the evolution of animal conflicts. , 1974, Journal of theoretical biology.

[12]  H. M. Taylor,et al.  Natural selection of life history attributes: an analytical approach. , 1974, Theoretical population biology.

[13]  G. Fryer,et al.  The Cichlid fishes of the Great Lakes of Africa. , 1973 .

[14]  J. C. Mackinnon.  Summer Storage of Energy and Its Use for Winter Metabolism and Gonad Maturation in American Plaice (Hippoglossoides platessoides) , 1972 .

[15]  J. Pope,et al.  An investigation of the accuracy of virtual population analysis using cohort analysis , 1972 .

[16]  P. Powles.  Size Changes, Mortality, and Equilibrium Yields in an Exploited Stock of American Plaice (Hippoglossoides platessoides) , 1969 .

[17]  C. Hubbs,et al.  FECUNDITY AND EGG SIZE IN TWO CENTRAL TEXAS DARTER POPULATIONS , 1968 .

[18]  Rajko Tomović,et al.  Sensitivity analysis of dynamic systems , 1963 .

[19]  D. Falconer,et al.  Introduction to Quantitative Genetics. , 1961 .

[20]  W. Ricker.  Mortality Rates in Some Little-Exploited Populations of Fresh-Water Fishes , 1949 .

[21]  J. Orton.  Reproduction and Death in Invertebrates and Fishes , 1929, Nature.