Estimating the transition of individuals between life stages

Over their lifetimes, individuals of a species transition from one stage of their life cycle to the next (for example, a nonreproductive juvenile will mature to a reproductive adult). Estimating the age at which these transitions occur can be complex for a variety of reasons. A fundamental, generalizable way to assess the mean age of transition along with a standard deviation of the distribution of the transition is developed. We propose and …