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On the incompatibility of gompertz or weibull survival dynamics with exponentially distributed individual lifespans
Authors:Frank Guess  Matthew Witten
Institution:(1) Department of Statistics, University of South Carolina, 29208 Columbia, SC, USA;(2) ETA Systems, Inc., 1450 Energy Park Drive, 55108 St. Paul, MN, USA
Abstract:It is well documented, in the biological literature, that many species throughout the animal kingdom exhibit Gompertzian or Weibull-like population level total survival distributions. Many researchers have long assumed, believed, or otherwise postulated that an individual organism, in such a population, survived according to an exponential survival distribution. Using well-known results from reliability theory, it is shown that if every individual in the population has an exponentially distributed lifespan, then a Gompertzian or Weibull-like group/population level dynamics (or any other dynamics with a strictly increasing mortality rate for some interval) is not possible. This implies that, for species with a population level Gompertzian or Weibull (with the mortality rate strictly increasing) survival curve, some or all of the individual organisms must have non-exponentially distributed lifespans.
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