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Ornithology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Boise State University

2018

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Full-Text Articles in Ornithology

Sex Determination By Morphological Measurements Of Young Rockhopper Penguins (Eudyptes Chrysocome) During The Crèche Phase, Virginia Morandini, Miguel Ferrer, Lynelle Perry, Marc Bechard Dec 2018

Sex Determination By Morphological Measurements Of Young Rockhopper Penguins (Eudyptes Chrysocome) During The Crèche Phase, Virginia Morandini, Miguel Ferrer, Lynelle Perry, Marc Bechard

Raptor Research Center Publications and Presentations

To provide an easy and reliable work tool to identify the sex of Rockhopper Penguin (Eudyptes chrysocome) chicks, we weighed and measured 95 nestlings in the crèche phase during 24-31 January 2017 on the Falkland Islands, Argentina. Sex was subsequently determined using DNA analyses of blood from the same individuals. Significant differences were found in bill length (exposed culmen), bill depth and width, flipper length, and diagonal tarsus, but stepwise discriminant analysis showed bill length to be the best predictor for sex determination. Our model correctly classified 82.7% of males and 90.2% of females (overall correct classification 86.2%). …