Morphometric age and sex identification of Eurasian Collared Doves (Streptopelia decaocto friv.) a pilot-test

Abstract

In this research, our main goal was to test, if there is an effective, yet economical way to perform native sexing on Columbidae species in field conditions. Since molecular sexing is not available among field conditions, a morphometric method was aimed to be used. After morphometric measurements, autopsy was performed to determine the sex of collected birds. The novelty of the method is that we added a new measure point to improve age and sex determination. The method was tested on Eurasian Collared Doves (n=18). Our result showed that the gap of pubic bones is highly correlated to age and most of the main morphometric data, despite the low sample number.