Gompertz survival kinetics: Fall in number alive or growth in number dead?
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Gompertz survival kinetics: Fall in number alive or growth in number dead?
zbMATH Open document ID: 0841.92020
author: Dexter M. Easton
published in: Theoretical Population Biology
publication date: 1996-07-16T00:00:00Z
review text: Basing their conclusion on impressively large numbers, \textit{J. R. Carey} et al. [Science 258, 457-461, 398 (1992)] \((> 1.2\) million medflies, Ceratitis capitata) and \textit{J. W. Cursinger} et al. [ibid., 461-463 (1992)] (hundreds of Drosophila melanogaster of different genotypes) suggest that the classical Gompertz model of survival is deficient in that it predicts for the older individuals a higher mortality rate than is observed, specifically for fruit flies and, possibly, other organisms. However, it appears that the survival of the older individuals is ``exceptional'' only because the standard survivorship equation (Gompertz, 1825) is not, at least for Mediterranean fruit flies (Carey et al., 1992), an appropriate application of Gompertz kinetics. In generalized Gompertz kinetics, the rate coefficient, \(r\), of an exponentially increasing or decreasing process \(dy/dx = \pm r \cdot y\) may itself change exponentially in a positive or negative direction, i.e., \(dr/dt = \pm k \cdot r\). When the appropriate form of this model is used, the proportional demise of the older subjects in the Carey et al. (1992) data follows the same rule as the rest of the population.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 92D25
zbMATH DE Number: 797078
zbMATH Keywords: classical Gompertz model of survival
zbMATH Keywords: survival of the older individuals
zbMATH Keywords: generalized Gompertz kinetics
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: tpbi.1995.1019
OpenAlex ID: W2090565123
DOI: 10.1006/TPBI.1995.1019
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 797078