Morphological variation as a tool for monitoring bird populations: a review

This paper shows how our knowledge of the evolution, ecology and conservation of birds can be improved through the analysis of external morphological traits. After giving a short history of morphological studies of birds, we discuss the pros and cons of such data in exploring within-species variation and describe the main patterns and hypotheses related to the factors affecting bird size and shape. We describe the usefulness of external measurements (including body mass and feather morphology) of live birds for inferring population differentiation or intraspecific variation in body condition. Bird morphology monitoring is conceptually similar to other programs aimed at recording the distribution of species and their habitats. However, it has one additional advantage: the same data used to describe variation can be used to infer the processes underlying observed changes by testing geographical or ecomorphological predictions. Morphological approaches may be implemented in the context of ...本研究阐明了通过分析鸟类外部形态性状，可如何深化我们对鸟类演化、生态学与保护生物学的认知。在简述鸟类形态学研究简史后，本文探讨了此类数据在探究种内变异时的优劣，并阐述了与影响鸟类体型与形态的相关因素有关的主要模式及假说。本文还阐述了活体鸟类外部测量指标（包括体重与羽毛形态）在推断种群分化或身体状况的种内变异方面的应用价值。鸟类形态监测在理念上与其他旨在记录物种及其栖息地分布的监测计划类似，但该监测方案具备一项额外优势：可通过检验地理学或生态形态学(ecomorphological)预测，利用同一套用于描述变异的数据，推断观测到的变化背后的潜在过程。形态学研究方法可在……的框架下得以应用。