Figure 1. Survival of 605528 female medflies reared in a total of 167 cages at the Moscamed Mass Rearing Facility in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico; the project was titled ‘Oldest-Old Mortality in the Mediterranean Fruitfly’ and funded by the National Institute on Aging; data from JR Carey, Liedo D, Orozco and JW Vaupel and published as Appendix 3 in Carey (1993)

Figure 2. Survival curve determined from 1289 skeletal remains at a human burial site (the Libben site) in the Great Black Swamp of northern Ohio, data shown in Table 1.

Figure 3. General survival showing possible shapes: (a) linear scale; (b): logarithmic scale; Type I survival is good for most of the life and then there is a catastrophic decline; Type II survival rate is constant, which means the probability does not change with age; Type III survival is poor for youngest ages but then survival is high for the remainder of life.

Figure 4. Visual presentation of population projection using p_x and m_x values given in Table 2 and starting with 100 age₁ individuals; over a period of 1 year, age₁ individuals move to age₂ but survival is 0.4 yr^–1 and so just 40 individuals are in age₂; age₂ individuals reproduce each with 11 female offspring and so there are 440 in age₀ so the total population is 440 plus 40 or 480.

Figure 5. Population growth in numbers showing early fluctuation followed by a smooth rise with a constant rate.

Figure 6. (a) Fluctuation in population growth rate before settling on a constant value; (b) fluctuations in the fractions of individuals in each age class starting with 100% in age1; following fluctuations, the fractions become fixed and these fixed fractions are the stable-age distribution.