Title: lxmx life table
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - l<i>x</i>m<i>x</i> life table
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.14822
Status: current

Definition
Life table that summarizes both mortality and natality data for populations.

Note
"\({\rm{l}}x\)" is the actual number or the proportion (as a decimal or percentage) of survivors at the beginning of age interval \(x\). Since several samples are often averaged together, the \({\rm{l}}x\) values may not always be whole numbers. "\({\rm{m}}x\)" is the number of female births to each age group of "mothers"; the number of eggs or young which are female (in a species with a 1:1 sex ratio, this is \({\rm{m}}x/2\) where \({\rm{m}}x\) is the total eggs or young produced per female at age \(x\)). Since, for most organisms, one male can fertilize a number of females, the size of the population is more dependent on the number of females present, and the calculations are usually done using only females.

Related Term
- populations: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14932

Source
- PAC, 2009, 81, 829. 'Glossary of terms used in ecotoxicology (IUPAC Recommendations 2009)' on page 909 (https://doi.org/10.1351/PAC-REC-08-07-09)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14822/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14822/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14822/xml

Citation: Citation: 'l<i>x</i>m<i>x</i> life table' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.14822
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Accessed: 2026-07-25T08:55:25+00:00