Skewed sex ratios in Dynastes tityus

N

Nathan

L3
Is it normal to have more females than males? I have 14 female pupae plus two adult females that already eclosed. So far I have only 9 male pupae! Is this normal? I still have a few more to pupate so I'm hoping they will be males. Enough females already!!!

 
Sounds normal to me. You'll more frequently get more of one sex or the other than not--it's not like you'll get an exact ratio 50:50 ratio every time in the real world even if it's supposed to be 50:50. The smaller sample size you have, the more noticeable a skew. Look on the bright side! If you let all your females breed, you'll have so many larvae that there's no way you'll be able to produce enough substrate to keep up with their consumption rate. Or is that the dark side?
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I wasn't expecting a sex ratio of 50/50 I just figured it'd be a little closer than what I've gotten. I rear hundreds of Saturniid moths every year and those ratios are fairly close to 50/50. I've always had the same for mantids as well.

There is no way I would even want to try rearing all those offspring, lol! Maybe there will be some takers out there for tityus larvae next year if all goes as planned! ¡

 
Both Saturniidae and Mantises have higher numbers of offspring, so you're more likely to get close to 50:50. You just happened to get a poor representation of the normal ratio due to small sample size. You can sex them once they're second instar, but it's easier to with third instar larvae if you'd like to get an idea of what ratio of sexes you have before they're pupae.

 
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