mass mortality
Many dying together
Mass mortality is the death of a large number of organisms in a relatively short time.
The term appears most often in ecology and wildlife management: a mass mortality event among sea stars, mass mortality of fish following the chemical spill.
It can also describe human deaths from disasters, epidemics, or violence, though phrases like "mass death" or "mass casualty" are more common in those contexts.
- epidemicWidespread disease occurrence
- plagueDeadly epidemic disease
- extinctionComplete vanishing of a species
- population crashSudden drop in numbers
- die-offRapid population disappearance
fish kill · dead zone · catastrophe · carcasses · devastation · pandemic · famine · genocide · holocaust · death camp · carnage · slaughter · body count · death toll · contagion · pestilence · collapse · wipeout
mass mortalitypopulation boom
Rapid increase in people
population explosion · baby boom · species recovery · miraculous survival · population growth
mass, mortality, masses, massive, massively, massed, massing, mortal, mortally