major hypotheses currently exist to help explain sex-biased dispersal. The resource-competition hypothesis infers that the more philopatric sex (the sex more likely to remain at its natal grounds) benefits during reproduction simply by having familiarity with natal ground resources. A second proposal for sex-biased dispersal is the local mate competition hypothesis, which introduces the idea that individuals encounter less mate competition with relatives the farther from their natal grounds they disperse. And the inbreeding avoidance hypothesis suggests individuals disperse to decrease inbreeding. Studying these hypotheses can be arduous since it is nearly impossible to keep track of every individual and their whereabouts within and between populations. To combat this time-consuming method, scientists have recruited several molecular ecology techniques in order to study sex-biased dispersal. One method is the comparison of differences between nuclear and mitochondrial markers among populations. Markers showing higher levels of differentiation indicate the more philopatric sex; that is, the more a sex remains at natal grounds, the more their markers will take on a unique I.D, due to lack of gene flow with respect to that marker. Researchers can also quantify male-male and female-female pair relatedness within populations to understand which sex is more likely to disperse. Pairs with values consistently lower in one sex indicate the dispersing sex. This is because there is more gene flow in the dispersing sex and their markers are less similar than individuals of the same sex in the same population, which produces a low relatedness value. FST values are also used to understand dispersing behaviors by calculating an FST value for each sex. The sex that disperses more displays a lower FST value, which measures levels of inbreeding between the subpopulation and the total population. Additionally, assignment tests can be utilized to quantify the number of individuals of a certain sex dispersing to other populations. A more mathematical approach to quantifying sex-biased dispersal on the molecular level is the use of spatial autocorrelation. This correlation analyzes the relationship between geographic distance and spatial distance. A correlation coefficient, or r value, is calculated and the plot of r against distance provides an indication of individuals more related to or less related to one another than expected. Quantitative trait loci A quantitative trait locus (QTL) refers to a suite of genes that controls a quantitative trait. A quantitative trait is one that is influenced by several different genes as opposed to just