From field to museum tray: shrinking of the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos

Article Sidebar

PDF

Main Article Content

Murray Williams

Abstract

Four commonly-recorded body measurements were collected from fresh specimens of Mallard Anas platyrhynchos and of captive-raised Mallard × Grey Duck A. superciliosa hybrids, and the same specimens were measured again 25+ years later to determine the extent of tissue shrinkage. There was little shrinkage in bill length but average shrinkage in bill widths, tarsus lengths and wing lengths were between 3.0–4.7%, with changes in bill width and tarsus length being the most variable and extreme. Correction values to allow the combining of field and museum specimen measurements are provided.

Article Details

How to Cite
Williams, M. (2017). From field to museum tray: shrinking of the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos. Wildfowl, 123–129. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/Wildfowl/article/view/154414
Issue
Wildfowl 67
Section
Short Communications

Articles in Wildfowl volumes 1-74 and in Wildfowl Special Issues 1-7  are not licensed under Creative Commons. In these volumes, all rights are reserved to the authors of the articles respectively.

The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (which published the journal from 1948–2020 inclusive) retains a royalty-free license in perpetuity to access and use pre-2021 issues for the purposes of research, which may involve sharing with research partners from time to time.

The copyright for this paper belongs to the Author(s). Papers published in Wildfowl 75 (in 2025) and subsequent issues are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

In the articles published in these volumes, all rights are reserved to the authors of the articles respectively. This implies that readers can download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish the articles. Authors can upload their articles into an institutional repository.