COMPARATIVE TEMPORAL DISCOLOURATION OF DRY MUSEUM SPECIMENS OF MOUNTAIN BLACKEYE (Chlorocharis emiliae)

Abstract

Plumage colour studies using museum skins is one of the ways to understand species evolution and plumage polymorphism. The invaluable scientific information on a single historic specimen should be well-presented in the most regarded form of quality skin. However, aging plumage feathers are hypothetically susceptible to colour fading therefore doubting the relevant of using old specimens for plumage colour assessment. We examined the colour changes in 36 museum specimens by conducting series of Munsell colour scoring by comparing recent and old skins of mountain blackye (Chlorocharis emiliae), at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) and Sarawak Museum (SM). The year-gap of both sets of specimens ranged from 52 to 75 years. Eight plumage characters included in this study were crown, supercilium, auricular, mantle, rump, breast, belly and vent. The results revealed that the head (crown and auricular) and underparts (breast and vent) tend to fade extensively overtime compared to the upperparts. Therefore the results of this study support the earlier findings that aging plumage feathers are susceptible to colour fading.