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）是揭示生态学、进化生物学与种群动态的关键生活史性状。然而，成熟相关数据的采集成本高昂，或难以获取。生活史理论指出，多数生物的生长呈双相模式，即在成熟节点出现生长拐点。若该假设成立，则可借助双相生长模型从生长数据中估算AAM。为验证这一推论，我们采用似然剖面分析框架下的莱斯特双相生长模型，基于年龄-体长数据估算AAM。我们将模型拟合至模拟生长轨迹，以明确准确估算AAM所需的最低数据要求——包括样本量、年龄-体长测量精度，以及成熟所带来的躯体生长成本。随后，我们将该方法应用于大型白斑狗鱼（Sander vitreus）数据集，结果显示当模型拟合效果良好时，我们估算的AAM与传统估算结果高度吻合。最后，我们将该方法应用于多种外温动物的年龄-体长数据，以此展示其应用潜力。本方法有望成为从现代与历史样本中估算AAM及其他生活史性状的有效工具。