Meeting Abstract
Many studies in various avian species have reported sex ratios deviating from the expected 1:1 male to female ratio. This literature almost exclusively focuses on various factors that can influence sex ratio, such as food availability or mate attractiveness, while few studies examine sex ratios in the absence of these environmental and social cues. One such study in Eclectus parrots found that females in captivity produce long strings of only one sex before switching to the other. This extreme bias was observed in multiple females from multiple breeders. We hypothesize that this phenomenon of skewed sex ratios with no outside influences may occur in other birds. We tested this by observing three flocks of Japanese quail and monitoring sex ratios for two weeks under identical environmental and dietary conditions. The quail were pair housed in temperature and light controlled facilities and given free access to food and water. Eggs were collected, incubated, and sexed via dissection or molecular techniques. In our study, we refer to sex ratios below 0.4 as female biased and those above 0.6 as male biased. In flock one, we found 25 fertile pairs (those that produced at least seven fertile eggs in the two-week span). Of those, five were female biases while eight were male biased. In flock two we found 27 fertile pairs, of which six were female biased and seven were male biased. We tested to see if these biases could be explained by female body condition and found that sex ratios were independent of body mass. Data from third flock is still being analyzed, and these sex ratios will be compared to male and female body morphometrics. Given the multiple examples of bias in two separate flocks, we believe that Japanese quail may alter their sex ratios independent of currently known cues.
