title: The age-specific force of natural selection and biodemographic walls of death.
abstract: W. D. Hamilton's celebrated formula for the age-specific force of natural selection furnishes predictions for senescent mortality due to mutation accumulation, at the price of reliance on a linear approximation. Applying to Hamilton's setting the full nonlinear demographic model for mutation accumulation recently developed by Evans, Steinsaltz, and Wachter, we find surprising differences. Nonlinear interactions cause the collapse of Hamilton-style predictions in the most commonly studied case, refine predictions in other cases, and allow walls of death at ages before the end of reproduction. Haldane's principle for genetic load has an exact but unfamiliar generalization.
authors: Department of Demography, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2120, USA. wachter@demog.berkeley.edu
authors: Kenneth W
authors: KW
authors: Wachter
authors: Steven N
authors: SN
authors: Evans
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Steinsaltz
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000235:genetics; D000818:Animals; D003710:Demography / Q000379:methods*; D005828:Genetics, Population / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009026:Mortality; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D012641:Selection, Genetic / Q000235:genetics*
keywords: biodemography; hazard functions; senescence
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