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Hatching sex ratio and sex specific chick mortality in common terns Sterna hirundo

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Abstract

Bias in sex ratios at hatching and sex specific post hatching mortality in size dimorphic species has been frequently detected, and is usually skewed towards the production and survival of the smaller sex. Since common terns Sterna hirundo show a limited sexual size dimorphism, with males being only about 1–6% larger than females in a few measurements, we would expect to find small or no differences in production and survival of sons and daughters. To test this prediction, we carried out a 2-year observational study on sex ratio variation in common terns at hatching and on sex specific post hatching mortality. Sons and daughters hatched from eggs of similar volume. Post hatching mortality was heavily influenced by hatching sequence. In addition, we detected a sex specific mortality bias towards sons. Overall, hatching sex ratio and sex specific mortality resulted in fledging sex ratios 8% biased towards females. Thus, other reasons than body size may be influencing the costs of rearing sons. Son mortality was not homogeneous between brood sizes, but greater for two-chick broods. Since adults rearing two-chick broods were younger, lighter and bred consistently later than those rearing three-chick broods, it is suggested that lower capacity of two-chick brood parents adversely affected offspring survival of sons. Though not significantly, two-chick broods tended to be female biased at hatching, perhaps to counteract the greater male-biased nestling mortality. Thus, population bias in secondary sex ratio is not limited to strongly size dimorphic species, but species with a slight sexual size dimorphism can also show sex ratio bias through a combination of differential production and mortality of sons and daughters.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Be 916/5). During fieldwork and writing J.G-S. was supported by a post-doctoral grant from Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia of Spain, a ‘Marie Curie’ grant of the European Union, a Postdoctoral grant of the Generalitat de Catalunya, and contract of the Program ‘Ramón y Cajal’ of the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología of Spain co-funded by Fondos FEDER. We are grateful to TROVAN for offering transponders. We thank I. Kolaschnik, E. Fredrich, M. Wagener, A. Wilms, B. Bloechinger for their help in the field, E. Sokolov for his help sexing dead chicks, H. Sauer-Gürth for technical assistance in molecular sex determination and L. Jover for performing some statistical analyses. Comments of K. Lessels, I. Nisbet, P. Szczys, M.T. Murphy, K. Wiebe and A.E. Powell and anonymous referees on earlier versions greatly improved the manuscript. J.G-S. does not thank Kimberly Smith, the editor of Auk, for retaining an earlier version of this paper for more than two years (from December 2001 to April 2004), and finally rejecting it after losing the referee’s comments before the authors could see them. The investigations were performed under licences of the Niedersächsisches Landesverwaltungsamt, Hanover, and of the Bezirksregierung Weser–Ems, Oldenburg (Tierschutzangelegenheiten; Nationalparkverwaltung).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department de Biologia Animal (Vertebrats), Universitat de Barcelona, Av Diagonal 645, Barcelona, 08028, Spain

    Jacob González-Solís

  2. Institut für Vogelforschung “Vogelwarte Helgoland”, An der Vogelwarte 21, 26386, Wilhelmshaven, Germany

    Peter H. Becker

  3. Institut für Angewandte Ökologie, Alte Dorfstraße 11, 18184, Neu Broderstorf, Germany

    Helmut Wendeln

  4. Institut für Pharmazeutische Biologie, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 364, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany

    Michael Wink

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  1. Jacob González-Solís
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  2. Peter H. Becker
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  4. Michael Wink
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Correspondence to Jacob González-Solís.

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Communicated by F. Bairlein

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González-Solís, J., Becker, P.H., Wendeln, H. et al. Hatching sex ratio and sex specific chick mortality in common terns Sterna hirundo. J Ornithol 146, 235–243 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-005-0084-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-005-0084-7

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