New primers for molecular sex identification of waders

Determining the sex of individuals through molecular methods is an increasingly<br/>important research tool, particularly for studies of sexually monomorphic species.<br/>However, currently available primer sets to molecularly sex birds are known to<br/>cause difficulties in sexing Red Knots Calidris canutus and several other waders,<br/>due to amplification failure of, and polymorphisms on, the CHD-Z gene. To<br/>counter these problems, we developed a new primer set, 2602F/2669R, and<br/>show that these primers can be used to reliably sex Red Knots and eight other<br/>wader species in four genera. We expect these primers to be useful in a wide<br/>range of wader and possibly non-wader species.