The ability to accurately identify individuals is required for the detailed study of animals. Numerous artificial markers have been developed for this purpose. Negative effects on survival, reproductive success and behavior have been reported for most marking methods, significantly affecting the very parameters being studied. / Birds of prey have suffered the shortcomings of artificial marking methods. In light of the known and potential deleterious effects of marking, attention has been focused on developing new techniques to identify individual raptors without attaching artificial markers. / This study investigated the use of tarsal scale patterns as unique individual identifiers in birds of prey. The American kestrel (Falco sparverius) was chosen as a model. Both legs of seventy-five kestrels were photographed over a two-year period. / Photographic comparisons of 150 scale patterns demonstrated the uniqueness of each and therefore its ability to be used as an individual's natural identifier. Furthermore, patterns were found to remain unchanged from one year to the next. These findings support the hypotheses that tarsal scale patterns are unique to each bird and do not change over time. / A method of coding the tarsal scale patterns was developed. These codes can be used in a computerized data base to significantly enhance the speed of pattern searches.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.23929 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Palma, Cristián R. (Cristián Ricardo) |
| Contributors | Bird, David (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Natural Resource Sciences.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001500015, proquestno: MM12255, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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