Data from: Accurate estimates of age-at-maturity from the growth trajectories of fishes and other ectotherms

Age-at-maturity (AAM) is a key life history trait that provides insight into ecology, evolution, and population dynamics. However, maturity data can be costly to collect or may not be available. Life history theory suggests that growth is biphasic for many organisms, with a change-point in growth occurring at maturity. If so, then it should be possible to use a biphasic growth model to estimate AAM from growth data. To test this prediction, we used the Lester biphasic growth model in a likelihood profiling framework to estimate AAM from length-at-age data. We fit our model to simulated growth trajectories to determine minimum data requirements (in terms of sample size, precision in length-at-age, and the cost to somatic growth of maturity) for accurate AAM estimates. We then applied our method to a large walleye Sander vitreus data set and show that our AAM estimates are in close agreement with conventional estimates when our model fits well. Finally, we highlight the potential of our method by applying it to length-at-age data for a variety of ectotherms. Our method shows promise as a tool for estimating AAM and other life history traits from contemporary and historical samples.成熟年龄（Age-at-maturity, AAM）是一项关键的生活史特征，可为生态学、进化生物学及种群动态研究提供重要洞察。然而，成熟度数据的采集往往成本高昂，甚至根本无法获取。生活史理论指出，多数生物的生长呈双相模式，在成熟阶段会出现生长拐点。若该理论成立，则可借助双相生长模型从生长数据中估算AAM。为验证这一推测，我们基于似然分析框架，使用莱斯特双相生长模型（Lester biphasic growth model），从年龄-体长数据（length-at-age data）中估算AAM。我们将模型拟合至模拟生长轨迹，以明确准确估算AAM所需的最小数据条件，涵盖样本量、年龄-体长测量精度以及成熟对躯体生长的代价。随后，我们将该方法应用于大型大眼梭鲈（Sander vitreus）数据集，结果显示当模型拟合效果良好时，我们得到的AAM估算值与传统估算值高度一致。最后，我们通过将该方法应用于多种外温动物的年龄-体长数据，展示了其应用潜力。本方法有望成为从当代及历史样本中估算AAM及其他生活史特征的有效工具。