Final answer:
The statement is true; mortality tables provide the probability of death by year and are used to estimate life expectancy and mortality rates for defined age intervals of a population.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that mortality tables list the probability of death by year is true. Mortality tables, also known as life tables, are crucial for providing insights into the life history of an organism, including estimating human life expectancy. These tables categorize a population into different age intervals, and for each interval, the table describes the number of individuals that die and those that survive, calculated over a defined time period. Moreover, mortality tables include the mortality rate, which is calculated using the number of individuals who die within an age interval divided by those alive at the beginning of that interval and then multiplied by 1000.
An example of where mortality tables are applied is in the study of Dall mountain sheep, where the population is segmented into distinct age groups. The life expectancy and mortality rates are calculated for each group to understand the species' survival patterns. Additionally, life tables can aid in testing hypotheses about mortality patterns, such as the hypothesis that mortality rates may be very high during certain developmental periods of a species.