Average body mass of songbirds in the Uk

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Average body mass of adult songbirds in the UK

The body mass of bird species can be proposed as a determinant of many traits in an individual, for example, studies have been conducted to question whether body mass has an effect on; skeletal mass (Brooke, Hanley and Laughlin, 1999), metabolic rate (Clark, 1979), clutch size (Hudson et al., 2013) and eye size (Martin-Silverstone et al., 2015) to name a few. The general method for measuring body mass in birds is to capture the desired species and weigh their mass to 0.1g accuracy and then release them(Rising and Somers, 1989). There are of course, some flaws in this method of capture and release, some individuals may be caught multiple times, creating a biassed result of the true average (Herring, Gawlik and Beerens, 2008), as well as this, different papers measured the mass of their specific species of interest during different seasons which has a stong effect of body mass (Scott, Mitchell and Evans, 1994). Having said that, a compiled data set of body mass in birds such as songbirds can act as a base line to compare change in body masses after changes in the species' environment each year, whether due to climate change or after migration to track the welfare of the indivdual and their quality of diet and inform conservationists on whether action id required for the species if the average body mass is in decline.

The data was collected using google scholar and searching the term "body mass" and the desired species, only page one of the results were sifted through as it had the most relevance. If body mass was highlighted in the papers brief description below the title on the google scholar search page, the paper was selected to read through in attempt to find the relevant data. When the body mass was stated to vary between two figures, the masses were averaged for an average mass to use in this data set. The average was also taken of both female and male body masses together when possible to create an average body mass of the species in general, not specific to sex. This was mostly completed in the handbook of avian masses book source.

References:

- Brooke, M. de L., Hanley, S. and Laughlin, S.B. (1999) ‘The scaling of eye size with body mass in birds’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 266(1417), pp. 405–412. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1999.0652.

- Clark, G.A. (1979) ‘Body Weights of Birds: A Review’, The Condor, 81(2), p. 193. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/1367288.

- Hudson, L.N. et al. (2013) ‘The relationship between body mass and field metabolic rate among individual birds and mammals’, The Journal of Animal Ecology, 82(5), pp. 1009–1020. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12086.

- Martin-Silverstone, E. et al. (2015) ‘Exploring the Relationship between Skeletal Mass and Total Body Mass in Birds’, PLOS ONE, 10(10), pp. e0141794–e0141794. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141794.

- Rising, J.D. and Somers, K.M. (1989) ‘The Measurement of Overall Body Size in Birds’, The Auk, 106(4), pp. 666–674. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/auk/106.4.666.

- Herring, G., Gawlik, D.E. and Beerens, J.M. (2008) ‘Evaluating two new methods for capturing large wetland birds’, Journal of Field Ornithology, 79(1), pp. 102–110. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1557-9263.2008.00151.x.

- Scott, I., Mitchell, P.I. and Evans, P.R. (1994) ‘Seasonal changes in body mass, body composition and food requirements in wild migratory birds’, Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 53(3), pp. 521–531. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1079/pns19940062.