James Carey

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  Estimating age structure in insect populations using the captive cohort method
  James Carey

  My objective is to describe the theoretical foundation, analytical framework and empirical requirements for the use of the death distribution of live-captured insects of unknown age to estimate age structure in their population. I will start with a brief overview of several high tech methods currently used to estimate insect age (and thus population age structure), most of which are costly and all of which are limited. I will then introduce the demographic concept my colleagues and I developed as an alternative to the high-tech approach. Referred to as the captive cohort methods, we show that the death distribution of live-captured individuals of unknown age can be used to: (1) determine the exact age structure of hypothetical stationary populations (i.e. life table identity); ii) estimate the age structure of wild populations using a simple model and reference life tables; and iii) estimate quantitative changes in population mean age and qualitative changes in the age extremes (young and old). I will illustrate the utility of this approach from the results of field studies on the Mediterranean fruit flies populations in Greece, and end with a discussion of the broader implications of this method in both basic and applied ecology.