ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2019
Sex biases in bird and mammal natural history collections.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Linear morphometrics fail to support strong sexual dimorphism in Uintatherium anceps.PloS one · 2026Article
- Six-decade research bias towards fancy and familiar bird species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- AvianLexiconAtlas: A database of descriptive categories of English-language bird names around the world.PloS one · 2025Article
- Leveraging synthetic data produced from museum specimens to train adaptable species classification models.PloS one · 2025Article
- First description of the baubellum in the spectacled bear Tremarctos ornatus (Mammalia: Ursidae).Journal of anatomy · 2024Article
- Predator selection on phenotypic variability of cryptic and aposematic moths.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Article
- Regional variation in climate change alters the range-wide distribution of colour polymorphism in a wild bird.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Insect collecting bias in Arizona with a preliminary checklist of the beetles from the Sand Tank Mountains.Biodiversity data journal · 2023Article
- Sexual selection leads to positive allometry but not sexual dimorphism in the expression of horn shape in the blue wildebeest, Connochaetes taurinus.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Using temporal genomics to understand contemporary climate change responses in wildlife.Ecology and evolution · 2022Review
- Sex Bias in Sample Collections From Bats, the Culprit of SARS Coronavirus, SARS-Coronavirus-2, and Other Emerging Viruses.Infectious microbes & diseases · 2020Article
- Inference of natural selection from ancient DNA.Evolution letters · 2020Article
- Article
- Sex biases in bird and mammal natural history collections.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Natural history specimens are widely used across ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation. Although biological sex may influence all of these areas, it is often overlooked in large-scale studies using museum specimens. If collections are biased towards one sex, studies may not be representative of the species. Here, we investigate sex ratios in over two million bird and mammal specimen records from five large international museums. We found a slight bias towards males in birds (40% females) and mammals (48% females), but this varied among orders. The proportion of female specimens has not significantly changed in 130 years, but has decreased in species with showy male traits like colourful plumage and horns. Body size had little effect. Male bias was strongest in name-bearing types; only 27% of bird and 39% of mammal types were female. These results imply that previous studies may be impacted by undetected male bias, and vigilance is required when using specimen data, collecting new specimens and designating types.
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