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20 June 2020 Determining sex of adult Pacific walruses from mandible measurements
Nathan Taylor, Casey T. Clark, Nicole Misarti, Lara Horstmann
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Abstract

Pacific walruses (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) play a vital role in Arctic marine ecosystems and the subsistence lifestyle of Alaska Native communities. Museum collections contain numerous archaeological and historic walrus specimens that have proven useful in a variety of studies; however, for many cases, the sex of these specimens is unknown. Sexes of adult (> 5 years determined by tooth aging) Atlantic walruses (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) have been accurately determined in previous studies using mandible measurements. We tested the validity of this approach for Pacific walruses, and used full fusion of the mandibular symphysis to define adults. Using high precision digital calipers (± 0.01 mm), four measurements were taken either on the left or right side of 91 walrus mandibles: 80 modern mandibles (70 known-sex specimens; 10 unknown-sex specimens) and 11 archaeological mandibles of unknown sex. We used linear discriminant function analysis (LDFA) to determine what measurements best distinguished Pacific walrus males from females. Minimum mandible thickness had the most predictive power, whereas mandible length, height, and depth, were less predictive. Posterior probabilities indicated that LDFA classified the known-sex Pacific walruses with 100% accuracy, and unknown sex with ≥ 90% probability. The ability to define the sex of unknown individuals accurately could greatly increase the sample size of future projects dealing with skeletal remains, and will improve future research efforts.

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society of Mammalogists. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
Nathan Taylor, Casey T. Clark, Nicole Misarti, and Lara Horstmann "Determining sex of adult Pacific walruses from mandible measurements," Journal of Mammalogy 101(4), 941-950, (20 June 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyaa051
Received: 2 August 2019; Accepted: 19 April 2020; Published: 20 June 2020
KEYWORDS
archaeology
marine mammal
morphometric
Odobenidae
Odobenus rosmarus divergens
pinniped
sexual dimorphism
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