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Departments of * Physics and Edited by Kenneth W. Wachter, University of California, Berkeley,
CA, and approved October 24, 2001 (received for review May 8, 2001)
We propose a stochastic model of aging to explain deviations from
exponential growth in mortality rates commonly observed in empirical
studies. Mortality rate plateaus are explained as a generic consequence
of considering death in terms of first passage times for processes
undergoing a random walk with drift. Simulations of populations with
age-dependent distributions of viabilities agree with a wide array of
experimental results. The influence of cohort size is well accounted
for by the stochastic nature of the model.
Population Biology
Explaining mortality rate plateaus
and
,§
Biology, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139
To whom reprint requests should be addressed at:
Department of Physics, Building 54-621, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. E-mail:
jsweitz{at}segovia.mit.edu.
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.261228098
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