Measuring sexual size dimorphism in the yellow-pine chipmunk (Tamias amoenus)

Body size was examined in the yellow-pine chipmunk (Tamias amoenus), which is reported to have female-biased sexual size dimorphism. Our objective was to determine if yellow-pine chipmunks from the Kananaskis Valley were dimo rphic. Three methods were used. We compared body mass, 5 univariate compone nts of body size, and multivariate centroids between males and females, and quantified measurement error. Females were significantly heavier (10-20%) and had a longer body (4%) and a longer (0.9%) and wider (2.2%) skull than male chipmunks, as well as being larger in overall size of skeletal tissue (structural body size). Multivariate methods such as discriminant functiona l analysis can robustly determine whether the sexes are significantly diffe rent in overall structural body size. However, univariate measures of body size provide an intuitively clear index of the magnitude of the difference in size of a particular character between the sexes.