Age structure changes and extraordinary lifespan in wild medfly populations |
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Authors: | Carey James R Papadopoulos Nikos T Müller Hans-Georg Katsoyannos Byron I Kouloussis Nikos A Wang Jane-Ling Wachter Kenneth Yu Wei Liedo Pablo |
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Affiliation: | Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA; Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Department of Agriculture, Crop Production and Rural Environment, University of Thessaly, 384 36 Nea Ionia, Volos, Greece; Department of Statistics, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA; Laboratory of Applied Zoology and Parasitology, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece; Department of Demography, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico, 30700 |
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Abstract: | The main purpose of this study was to test the hypotheses that major changes in age structure occur in wild populations of the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly) and that a substantial fraction of individuals survive to middle age and beyond (> 3-4 weeks). We thus brought reference life tables and deconvolution models to bear on medfly mortality data gathered from a 3-year study of field-captured individuals that were monitored in the laboratory. The average time-to-death of captured females differed between sampling dates by 23.9, 22.7, and 37.0 days in the 2003, 2004, and 2005 field seasons, respectively. These shifts in average times-to-death provided evidence of changes in population age structure. Estimates indicated that middle-aged medflies (> 30 days) were common in the population. A surprise in the study was the extraordinary longevity observed in field-captured medflies. For example, 19 captured females but no reference females survived in the laboratory for 140 days or more, and 6 captured but no reference males survived in the laboratory for 170 days or more. This paper advances the study of aging in the wild by introducing a new method for estimating age structure in insect populations, demonstrating that major changes in age structure occur in field populations of insects, showing that middle-aged individuals are common in the wild, and revealing the extraordinary lifespans of wild-caught individuals due to their early life experience in the field. |
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Keywords: | age structure captive cohort Ceratitis capitata deconvolution model field demography life tables |
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