ArticlePloS one2024
Life tables in entomology: A discussion on tables' parameters and the importance of raw data.
Article in PloS one, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Age-Stage, Two-Sex Life Table Analyses ofInsects · 2026Article
- When thermal risk indices work and when they don't: A case study of two maize insect pests.MethodsX · 2025Article
- Plasma-activated water irrigation increases mortality of immature spider mites (Tetranychus urticae) on tomato plants.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Exploring Bruchus rufimanus Egg Substage Dynamics at Different Constant Temperatures.Physiologia plantarumArticle
- Adaptation of a Physiologically Based Model to Predict the Phenology of Philaenus spumarius, the Meadow Spittlebug.Physiologia plantarumArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Life tables are one of the most common tools to describe the biology of insect species and their response to environmental conditions. Although the benefits of life tables are beyond question, we raise some doubts about the completeness of the information reported in life tables. To substantiate these doubts, we consider a case study (Corcyra cephalonica) for which the raw dataset is available. The data suggest that the Gaussian approximation of the development times which is implied by the average and standard error usually reported in life tables does not describe reliably the actual distribution of the data which can be misleading and hide interesting biological aspects. Furthermore, it can be risky when life table data are used to build models to predict the demographic changes of the population. The present study highlights this aspect by comparing the impulse response generated by the raw data and by its Gaussian approximation based on the mean and the standard error. The conclusions of this paper highlight: i) the importance of adding more information to life tables and, ii) the role of raw data to ensure the completeness of this kind of studies. Given the importance of raw data, we also point out the need for further developments of a standard in the community for sharing and analysing data of life tables experiments.
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Registered trials
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