Life Sciences Commons^™

Precise, Highly Female-Biased Sex Ratios In A Social Spider, Leticia Avilés, John Mccormack, Asher Cutter, Todd Bukowski

John E. McCormack

It has been recognized for some time that the risk of producing maleless clutches should select for a lower than binomial variance in the sex ratio of organisms with female–biased sex ratios, small clutches and breeding groups containing the clutch of a single female. However, to date, precise sex ratios have only been reported for organisms with haplodiploid sex determination, a system which allows direct control of the sex of individual offspring. In contrast, under heterogametic sex determination chance is expected to play a crucial role in determining the sex composition of any one family, in particular when males are …