Female biased offspring sex ratios of eastern wild turkeys across the southeastern United States

Prevailing theory suggests that sex ratios of offspring at birth should not differ from parity if costs of producing offspring of both sexes are similar. However, offspring sex ratios may deviate from parity when there is sex specific variation in fitness returns. We assessed offspring sex ratios of eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) across the southeastern United States by molecular determination of sex from eggshell membranes of hatched clutches. Our objective was to evaluate whether offspring sex ratios differed from parity and to examine potential drivers of variation in offspring sex ratios across and within our study sites. We sexed 724 offspring from 83 nests using molecular markers and identified 278 males and 446 females, with a sex ratio of 38% male. We found that offspring sex ratios were biased towards females on 3 hunted study sites but did not differ from parity at our remaining non-hunted site. Specifically, on sites with spring hunting, where male mort..., , # Female biased offspring sex ratios of eastern wild turkeys across the southeastern United States

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.rr4xgxdm0](10.5061/dryad.rr4xgxdm0)

## Description of the data and file structure

Analysis of offspring sex ratios of eastern wild turkeys by molecular determination of sex from eggshell membranes of hatched clutches.

### Files and variables

#### File: OSR_Code.R

**Description:** R code for offspring sex ratio analysis and hidden markov model 

#### File: All_Eggshells_SexID_10.csv

**Description:** input for offspring sex ratio analysis 

##### Variables

* ID: unique identifier for each nest offspring belonged to
* clientSampleid: unique identifier for each offspring
* Sex: sex of offspring, either male (1) or female (0)
* State: state where nests were located
* Site: study site where nests were located
* SRS = Savannah River Site
* GA = Georgia
* WLA = west Louisiana
* SELA = southeast Louisiana 
* Year: year of which collection occurred
* age: ...,