Whiskered Auklet Ornament Symmetry Data for 721 Birds, 1992-2009

Ian L. Jones provides data and R code for a study on symmetry in facial feather ornaments of the Whiskered Auklet. The dataset covers 721 wild-caught marked individuals, with 162 of known sex and 94 of known age (1-16 years old), studied between 1992 and 2009. It was used to analyze effects of age, sex, body size, and condition on ornament asymmetries, and correlations with ocean climate and population measures.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between ornament asymmetry and individual traits like age and sex based on the study description.
• Analyzing correlations between population-level fluctuating asymmetry and environmental variables like ocean climate.
• Investigating links between morphological asymmetry and population productivity or survival metrics mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Includes data for 721 individual birds, providing a substantial sample size for analysis.
• Contains longitudinal data with known-age individuals spanning up to 16 years, collected over an 18-year period (1992-2009).
• Links individual morphological measurements to population-level ecological and climate variables.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific modeling tasks.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Ian L. Jones

Collection Method

Wild-caught marked individuals were studied, with measurements taken on facial plume ornaments.

Time Range

1992-2009