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Environmental factors influencing adult sex ratio in Trinidadian guppies

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Abstract

Sex ratios can influence mating behaviour, population dynamics and evolutionary trajectories; yet the causes of natural sex ratio variation are often uncertain. Although secondary (birth) sex ratios in guppies (Poecilia reticulata) are typically 1:1, we recorded female-biased tertiary (adult) sex ratios in about half of our 48 samples and male-biased sex ratios in none of them. This pattern implies that some populations experience male-biased mortality, perhaps owing to variation in predation or resource limitation. We assessed the effects of predation and/or inter-specific resource competition (intraguild predation) by measuring the local catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) of species (Rivulus killifish and Macrobrachium prawns) that may differentially prey on male guppies. We assessed the effects of resource levels by measuring canopy openness and algal biomass (chlorophyll a concentration). We found that guppy sex ratios were increasingly female-biased with increasing CPUE of Macrobrachium, and perhaps also Rivulus, and with decreasing canopy openness. We also found an interaction between predators and resource levels in that the effect of canopy openness was greatest when Macrobrachium CPUE was highest. Our study thus also reveals the value of simultaneously testing multiple environmental factors that may drive tertiary sex ratio variation.

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Acknowledgments

Paul Bentzen, Ian Paterson, Dylan Weese, and Eugenia Zandona helped in the field. Mike Marshall provided help and advice with chlorophyll a analysis. Jean-Sébastien Moore and Xavier Thibert-Plante provided help with data analysis and figures. Greg Grether, Anne Magurran, Amy Schwartz, Joel Trexler, and two anonymous reviewers provided useful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada provided financial support in the form of a Discovery grant to A.P.H. and a Canada Graduate Scholarship to A.E.M. All methods used in this study comply with current laws of the country in which they were performed.

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  1. Ann E. McKellar

    Present address: Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Redpath Museum, McGill University, 859 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC, H3A 2K6, Canada

    Ann E. McKellar & Andrew P. Hendry

  2. Department of Biology, University of California, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA

    Martin M. Turcotte

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  1. Ann E. McKellar
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Correspondence to Ann E. McKellar.

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Communicated by Joel Trexler.

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McKellar, A.E., Turcotte, M.M. & Hendry, A.P. Environmental factors influencing adult sex ratio in Trinidadian guppies. Oecologia 159, 735–745 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-008-1257-x

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