Secondary and Tertiary Sex Ratios in Nestling and Harvested Hatch-year White-winged Doves

Abstract

White-winged Doves (Zenaida asiatica) are a popular game bird in Texas. Historically, the range of White-winged Doves in the United States was limited to the arid southwest including portions of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Currently, because of a northward range expansion, White-winged Doves occur throughout Texas into Colorado and Utah. In addition, a population was introduced into Florida in the 1950s and appears to have spread up the eastern seaboard. The objectives of my study were to investigate whether sex ratios in wild White-winged Doves is biased in hatch sequence of eggs, hatchlings, and harvest mortality. Blood samples were collected from 62 hatchlings in the San Marcos, Texas, area and sex determined by DNA analysis. Additionally, harvest data from 1,016 White-winged Doves was collected from the Anacua Unit of the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area during the special White-winged Dove hunts in 2009 and 2010.1 determined age of harvested doves as either hatching year (HY) or after hatching year (AHY) by examination of morphological characteristics. Further, I determined the sex of harvested birds via internal examination of the gonads. I found that the secondary sex ratio of hatchlings was 1.95:1 and the HY harvest sex ratio was 1.81:1.1 concluded that sex ratio is biased, favoring males, in the hatch sequence of eggs, hatchlings, and HYs harvest mortality.