Area de Ecología, Departamento de Biología Celular y Ecología, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2012 Nov;85:115-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2012.08.005. Epub 2012 Sep 10.
The concentration of Pb was determined in feathers (contour feathers: mantle, pectoral, ventral, and primary- and secondary-coverts) of two sedentary species of raptors in Galicia (NW Spain): the tawny owl (Strix aluco) and the Northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis). A high degree of intraindividual variability was observed in all types of feathers, with coefficients of variation exceeding 100 percent. The correlations between feather types were too low to enable use of a single type of body feather to predict the concentration of Pb in the other feathers. The number of body feathers required to differentiate individuals on the basis of the concentration of Pb was extremely high, in some cases higher than the number of the particular type of feather in the bird. All of this provides clear evidence that the contour and covert feathers of the raptor species considered cannot be used to biomonitor contamination by Pb, at least in this sample where the overall feather concentration were fairly uniform.
对西班牙加利西亚（西北部）的两种定居猛禽（长尾林鸮和北方游隼）的羽毛（正羽：翼羽、胸羽、腹羽、初级覆羽和次级覆羽）中的 Pb 浓度进行了测定。所有类型的羽毛均表现出高度的个体内变异性，变异系数超过 100%。羽毛类型之间的相关性太低，无法使用单一类型的体羽来预测其他羽毛中 Pb 的浓度。为了根据 Pb 浓度区分个体，所需的体羽数量极高，在某些情况下，甚至高于鸟类中特定类型羽毛的数量。所有这些都清楚地表明，所研究的猛禽物种的正羽和覆羽不能用于生物监测 Pb 的污染，至少在这个整体羽毛浓度相当均匀的样本中是这样。
