Tweets,
I may be misremembering this, and haven't looked back into my class notes, but I believe that in one of Dennis Paulsen's Mater Birder lectures on waterfowl, he stated that predation is heavier on females because their maternal roles leave them more exposed than the males. He did not state disturbed habitat as a cause of gender imbalance (though that may be an additional factor) but he said that the gender ratio at hatching is approximately equal & that basically the females get picked off while the males are hiding in the bushes. I'm sure he was more articulate, but I think that was it,,,
Penny Koyama, Bothell
----- Original Message -----
From: Eric Kowalczyk
To: tweeters
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 12:34 PM
Subject: FW: [Tweeters] a question


the answer is instinct and survival of the fittest; if you are concerned about the female being drowned, since drowning a female might be considered not evolutionary adaptive, this might be looked at as aberrant behavior due to skewed sex ratios resulting from human disturbed/amended habitat;.......no morals involved; you are right, these are ducks and to the best of my knowledge, no supreme duck has written a book on morals yet.

just my 2 cents

Eric
Seattle



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