Mutation Accumulation and the Catastrophic Senescence of Pacific Salmon

Abstract

The bit-string model of biological aging is used to simulate the catastrophic senescence of Pacific Salmon. We have shown that reproduction occuring only once and at a fixed age is the only ingredient needed to explain the catastrophic senescence according the mutation accumulation theory. Several results are presented, some of them with up to $10^8$ fishes, showing how the survival rates in catastrophic senescence are affected by changes in the parameters of the model.