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Sex allocation and secondary sex ratio in Cuban boa (Chilabothrus angulifer): mother’s body size affects the ratio between sons and daughters

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Abstract

Secondary sex ratios of animals with genetically determined sex may considerably deviate from equality. These deviations may be attributed to several proximate and ultimate factors. Sex ratio theory explains some of them as strategic decisions of mothers improving their fitness by selective investment in sons or daughters, e.g. local resource competition hypothesis (LRC) suggests that philopatric females tend to produce litters with male-biased sex ratios to avoid future competition with their daughters. Until now, only little attention has been paid to examine predictions of sex ratio theory in snakes possessing genetic sex determination and exhibiting large variance in allocation of maternal investment. Cuban boa is an endemic viviparous snake producing large-bodied newborns (∼200 g). Extremely high maternal investment in each offspring increases importance of sex allocation. In a captive colony, we collected breeding records of 42 mothers, 62 litters and 306 newborns and examined secondary sex ratios (SR) and sexual size dimorphism (SSD) of newborns. None of the examined morphometric traits of neonates appeared sexually dimorphic. The sex ratio was slightly male biased (174 males versus 132 females) and litter sex ratio significantly decreased with female snout-vent length. We interpret this relationship as an additional support for LRC as competition between mothers and daughters increases with similarity of body sizes between competing snakes.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Ivan Rehák (The Prague zoological garden) for encouragement, discussions and valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. We thank Ms. Lucie Průšová, Ms. Veronika Cikánová, Dr. Petra Frýdlová, Dr. Silvie Lišková, Ms. Markéta Janovcová and Ms. Šárka Peléšková for their help with animal care and documentation; Mr. Milan Kaftan, Mr. Josef Lelek, Mr. Luboš Touš, Mr. Miloš Uhlíř, Dr. Svatopluk Bílý, Mr. Jiří Vergner (deceased), ZOO Ústí nad Labem and the Centre of Young Naturalists in Prague kindly provided breeding stocks and/or breeding records.

The project was supported by Charles University in Prague (project no. 1310414). The experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and Ministry of Education Youth and Sports (licence number 5530/2008-30 and 26 582/2012-40). Participation O.Š. was supported by SVV 260 313/2016 of the Charles University.

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  1. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Viničná 7, CZ-12844, Prague 2, Czech Republic

    Daniel Frynta, Tereza Vejvodová & Olga Šimková

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  1. Daniel Frynta
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  2. Tereza Vejvodová
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Communicated by: Sven Thatje

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Frynta, D., Vejvodová, T. & Šimková, O. Sex allocation and secondary sex ratio in Cuban boa (Chilabothrus angulifer): mother’s body size affects the ratio between sons and daughters. Sci Nat 103, 48 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-016-1369-9

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