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Evidence is presented that apoptosis of intestinal enterocytes is implicated in adult mortality immediately after the breeding season in Aphia minuta, a paedomorphic goby that spends its whole life cycle of <1 year in the water column as a pelagic and planktophagous fish. This could be the first documented case in which apoptosis triggers a population dynamic process such as natural mortality in a vertebrate.
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Caputo et al. (2002) studied this question.
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