Before revision: The estimation of the mortality rate function for a stage-structured population is obtained starting from time-series field data on the abundance of the species.
After revision: The estimation of the mortality rate function for a stage-structured population requires the knowledge of the biodemographic functions characterizing the species, namely development, mortality and fecundity. In general, development and fecundity can satisfactorily be estimated starting from literature data. Unfortunately, this is often not the case of the mortality function, because of the lack of experimental data. To overcome this problem we estimate the mortality rate function from field data on the abundance of the species.