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Sex ratios at birth and environmental temperatures
1Institute of Reproductive Medicine, University of Münster, Germany. Lerchl@uni-muenster.de
Die Naturwissenschaften
|August 19, 1999
Abstract:
The relationship between average monthly air temperature and sex ratios at birth (SRB) was analyzed for children born in Germany during the period 1946-1995. Both the absolute temperature and--more markedly--the monthly temperature deviations from the overall mean were significantly positively correlated with the SRB (P < 0.01) when temperatures were time-lagged against the SRB data by -10 or -11 months. It is concluded that the sex of the offspring is partially determined by environmental temperatures prior to conception.