Relationship of age patterns of fecundity to mortality, longevity, and lifetime reproduction in a large cohort of Mediterranean fruit fly females.

Daily reproduction was monitored throughout the lives of 1000 individual female Mediterranean fruit flies (Ceratitis capitata). Inasmuch as the average female medfly lived 35.6 days and laid 740 eggs in her lifetime, the overall data set consisted of information on around 740,000 eggs distributed over 35,600 fly-days. Results described include the frequency distributions of eggs/day at young (< or =30 days), middle (31-60 days), and older (61-90 days) ages, the relationship between individual life span and lifetime reproduction, the distribution of deaths for non-egg layers versus egg layers, and density plots for daily egg production relative to both lifetime reproduction and life span. One of the more surprising results was the lack of correlation of the total number of eggs laid by females at younger ages (all ages under 30) and subsequent reproduction and life span. Technical and conceptual implications for analyses of reproductive data on other species and groups are briefly discussed.