Sexual Differences in Survival and Recovery Rates of Lesser Snow Geese

Estimates of sex-specific survival have rarely been documented in geese and, unless examined carefully, may be biased due to differential migration among sexes. Consequently, we tested for sexual differences in survival and recovery rates in lesser snow geese (Chen caerulescens caerulescens) based on 30,000 hunter recoveries of 230,000 banded geese from the mid-continent population between 1950 and 1988. Overall, there were few differences between the sexes. Estimated survival rates for immature male geese (S=0.36) from La Perouse Bay (LPB) were lower than those for females (S=0.40, P<0.0001), but this was due almost entirely to bias in the estimates caused by emigration of males to migration routes with lower recovery rates