Plasticity and rectangularity in survival curves

Abstract

Living systems inevitably undergo a progressive deterioration of physiological function with age and an increase of vulnerability to disease and death. To maintain health and survival, living systems should optimize survival strategies with adaptive interactions among molecules, cells, organs, individuals, and environments, which arises plasticity in survival curves of living systems. In general, survival dynamics in a population is mathematically depicted by a survival rate, which monotonically changes from 1 to 0 with age. It would be then useful to find an adequate function to describe complicated survival dynamics. Here we describe a flexible survival function, derived from the stretched exponential function by adopting an age-dependent shaping exponent. We note that the exponent is associated with the fractal-like scaling in cumulative mortality rate. The survival function well depicts general features in survival curves; healthy populations exhibit plasticity and evolve towards rectangular-like survival curves, as examples in humans or laboratory animals.