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SUMMARY (1) Methods are described for the analysis of survival data. (2) The re-analysis of survival data for wild populations of eleven tropical species of mosquitoes revealed that in most of these populations the adult female mortality rates were not independent of age, as had commonly been supposed, but increased with age. (3) The patterns of mortality of most of the populations were well described by the Gompertz function, according to which the rate of mortality increases with age in such a manner that its logarithm is directly proportional to age. (4) The epidemiological implications of these findings were examined by calculating the 'longevity factor', which is a component of vectorial capacity, for seven of these populations. Considerable differences were obtained in estimates of the longevity factor when the Gompertz model of mortality was substituted, in appropriate cases, for the widely used exponential model.
Clements et al. (Sat,) studied this question.