The mineral profile of plumage in captive lesser snow geese

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This is a contribution to a larger study aimed at development of a technique to determine the origins of waterfowl from their feather chemistry. Results are reported of an experiment designed to show whether there were differences in the mineral profile between primary feathers one-half to two-thirds grown and fully formed feathers, within a population of captive lesser snow geese. Primaries 1 and 10 were used as sample materials and the elements Na, Ca, K, Fe, Cu, Mn, Mg, Zn, and Si were used as variables. Statistically significant differences were shown between stages of growth in respect to all variables except Cu and Zn. The experiment also showed significant differences between different primary feathers in respect to all variables, and some differences attributable to the sex of birds from which samples were taken.

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: