DESCRIPTION

DATLife (Demography of Aging across the Tree of Life) is a curated data source for the comparative analysis of mortality and fertility across animals. In this context, “curated” means that the quality of information is assessed and recorded in the database.

All information in DATLife is checked carefully, eventually recalculated, and continuously updated. DATLife contains only published data. For each data type, the study location, the study duration, and the end date of the study are recorded.

DATLife was created by Alexander Scheuerlein, Dirk Vieregg, Daniel Prast, and others, (see WHO’S WHO) for the Laboratory for Evolutionary Demography led by James W. Vaupel at the Max-Planck-Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany.

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Terms of Use

DATLife data are open access, free use, under the condition that DATLife is cited as the source (see USERS AGREEMENT). Please use the following format:

DATLife – The Demography Across the Tree of Life – database. Max-Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany). Available at www.datlife.org. (data downloaded on [date])

Should you find errors in the data, or wish to contribute see CONTRIBUTE in the menu.

DATLife holds the following population-level information

1. Age-specific mortality, mostly published as “life tables” or “age structures.” Currently, the database holds original data as published, with complete lifetables calculated using standard assumptions (see ABOUT THE PROJECT)

2. Age-specific fertility

3. Stage-specific mortality means for our purposes survival at a specific stage at which the exact ages are unknown. Typical examples of stage-specific survival data are annual juvenile and annual adult survival of animals.

4. Maximum observed lifespan is an extreme value of an individual in a given population. To facilitate quality assessment, we include the number of individual lifespans known within a study group, and whether the maximum observed lifespan was from an animal that was dead or alive.

5. Age at maturity. Although this age is frequently recorded in other compilations of data (Pantheria database, Animal Diversity Web), there are many fundamentally different definitions of the “age at sexual maturity.” Here, the original publications were retrieved and the exact data category is determined.