Ardea
Official journal of the Netherlands Ornithologists' Union

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van Franeker J.A. & Wattel J. (1982) Geographical variation of the Fulmar Fulmarus glacialis in the North Atlantic. ARDEA 70 (1): 31-44
The geographical variation in the Fulmar was re-examined when new collections, especially material from Rathbone Island, East Greenland, became available in the Zoologisch Museum Amsterdam. Coloration, length of bill and tarsus, weight, and length of wing and tail of the North Atlantic Fulmar populations were studied from skins and from the literature. A clinal decrease in bill-length and probably also in tarsus- length and weight is found from warmer to colder regions; deviations from the clinal pattern are too. small, or insufficiently known, to show historical instead of environmental influences. Variation in length of wing and tail is small and erratical. See Fig. 4. Variation in coloration is clearly not simply clinal, the large majority of each population being either coloured (L, D, DD) or white (LL). See Fig. 1 and 3. The differences between the populations, though not as strong as assumed by Salomonsen (1965), may be considered sufficiently pronounced in coloration and size to maintain a purely morphological separation in F. g. glacialis and F. g. auduboni. It is argued that these morphologically different forms can hardly be considered evolutionary units. A hypothesis of the history of F. glacialis is presented, in which close relationships are suggested between similarly coloured populations in the Pacific and Atlantic, in order to stimulate further research into the evolutionary meaning of the currently recognized subspecies in the Fulmar.


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