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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on August 25, 2004
Behavioral Ecology 2005 16(1):274-279; doi:10.1093/beheco/arh153
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Behavioral Ecology vol. 16 no. 1 © International Society for Behavioral Ecology 2005; all rights reserved.

Maternal condition and offspring sex ratio in polygynous ungulates: a case study of bighorn sheep

Pierrick Blancharda,b, Marco Festa-Biancheta, Jean-Michel Gaillardb and Jon T. Jorgensonc

a Département de biologie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada, b Unité Mixte de Recherche 5558, Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, Université Lyon 1, 69622 Villeurbanne cedex, France, and c Alberta Department of Sustainable Development, Fish and Wildlife Division, Suite 201, 800 Railway Avenue, Canmore, Alberta T1W 1P1, Canada

Address correspondence to M. Festa-Bianchet. E-mail: marco.festa-bianchet{at}usherbrooke.ca.

The Trivers and Willard model (TWM) predicts that for sexually dimorphic polygynous mammals, mothers able to provide a high level of care should bias offspring sex ratio in favor of sons. Contradictory results of empirical studies, however, suggest that selective pressures for adaptive offspring sex ratio vary with species and environmental conditions. We report the results of a 29-year study of marked bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) in a population that underwent wide changes in density and where most females were weighed each year. Lamb sex ratio was independent of absolute ewe mass and yearly deviations from individual or population average mass, but there was a nonsignificant trend towards fewer males being born at high population density. Bighorn sheep satisfy all the assumptions of the TWM but not its prediction: lamb sex ratio is independent of maternal ability to provide care. Recent hypotheses to explain the lack of relationship between maternal condition and offspring sex in ungulates are unlikely to apply to bighorn sheep. We suggest that the TWM may only apply when social rank strongly affects the ability to provide maternal care. Those circumstances are likely to occur for only a few species and within a narrow range of environmental conditions.

Key words: bighorn sheep, habitat quality, sex ratio, social rank, Trivers and Willard model, ungulates.


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