The morphometric analysis of Eurasian coot eggs (Fulica atra) under the local conditions from Câmpenești, North-Western Romania

Abstract

The aim of the present paper was to analyze the measurements of the Eurasian Coot (Fulica atra) eggs in order to evaluate if the local conditions, presented here, differ in some way from older data found in references dating to 1955 in Romania. The data were collected from the Eurasian Coot nests identified (N=8) at Câmpenești fishponds, located in North-Western Romania, in May 2018. The clutch size was 7.5 ±1.6, ranging from 5 to 10 eggs. The mean egg length was 50.81 mm, and the mean egg breadth was 34.5 mm with higher variability in case of the first measurement. The mean egg volume was 31.3 cm3 which is much smaller than reported in the Romanian references (36.13 cm3). Regarding intra-clutch variance, we found that some clutches manifest a higher length, breadth and volume variance than others which can be a result of the intraspecific nest parasitism or environmental variances. The results brought some extensions of egg length and egg breadth limits and also may reflect a decrease in egg size over time.