Possibility of Morphometrical Determining of Sex of Steppe Eagle Nestlings from Western and Eastern Populations?

Abstract

Sexual dimorphism among nestlings of the Steppe Eagle (Aquila nipalensis) is poorly manifested. Thus, determining of sex by morphometric methods encountered many difficulties and could be completed only by the most experienced ornithologists who knows the species very well. This article presents a morphometric method for determining sex of nestlings of the Steppe Eagles from different breeding populations that belongs to different size classes. The method is based on classification formula obtained via linear discriminant analysis conducted for the data set of measurements of Steppe Eagle’s nestlings from Central Kazakhstan and Altai Republic in 2017. To control the sex determination of nestlings a molecular-genetics method was used.

Keywords

• пернатые хищники, хищные птицы, степной орёл, Aquila nipalensis, определение пола