Abstract: There are three general types of survivorship curves in the animal sciences including convex type (type I or type A), straight type (type II or type B) and concave type (type III or type C). There are some discrepancies between the proportion surviving curves and survivorship curves. Since a survivorship curve can be only obtained by transforming a proportion surviving curve into normal log scare it seems inappropriate to determine a survivorship curve's type of a species based on the feature of its proportion surviving curve. For these reasons the authors suggests that a log scare transformation is needed in determining a type of survivor- ship curve.

Key words: Mammalian species, Proportion surviving curve, Survivorship curve, Life table

摘要： 动物的存活曲线通常可分为3种类型：凸型（Ⅰ型或A型）、直线型（Ⅱ型或B型）和凹型（Ⅲ型或C型）。存活率曲线与存活曲线在概念上有一定的区别。存活率要经过对数转换（或者直接采用对数标尺）后才能得到存活曲线类型，从动物的存活率曲线上直接判读存活曲线类型可能会导致错误的结论。鉴于存活曲线分析研究中出现的问题，建议在进行物种存活曲线类型的分析时，务必先进行对数转换。

关键词: 哺乳动物, 存活率曲线, 存活曲线, 生命表