ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN AGE SPECIFIC MORTALITY AND FECUNDITY RATES IN MAMMALS

As in Drosophila melanogaster, age specific fecundity and, among females, variation in fecundity, vary in parallel with age specific survivorship and death rate, respectively, in many small mammals. The seeming ubiquity of such parallelisms in the light of the fact that schedules of death rate are usually Gompertzian (Sacher, 1977) lends weight to the theory that senescence is an ongoing process involving a general decrementation in vitality. © 1979.