Understanding the progenitors of core collapse supernovae and their population statistics is a key ingredient for many current studies in astronomy but as yet this remains elusive .
Using the MESA stellar evolution code we study the dependence of the lower mass limit for making core collapse supernovae ( SNe ) as function of initial stellar metallicity .
We find that this mass limit is smallest at [ Z ] \approx - 2 with a value of \sim 8.3 \mathrm { M } _ { \odot } .
At [ Z ] = 0 the limit is \sim 9.5 \mathrm { M } _ { \odot } and continues to rise with higher metallicity .
As a consequence , for a fixed initial mass function the supernova rate may be 20 \% to 25 \% higher at [ Z ] = -2 than at [ Z ] = 0 .
This affects the association of observed SN rates as a probe for the cosmological star formation rate , rate predictions for supernova surveys , and population synthesis studies .