Allometry

Abstract

There is a statistical trend for larger birds to have higher aspect ratios than smaller ones, although the wing area varies as expected with the mass. This chapter uses original measurements (not trawled from the literature) of 220 bird species from the Wings Database of the Flight programme, and a subset of 44 species for which there are data on flight muscle mass, to make allometric plots of variables calculated by the programme. These include the minimum power speed, wingbeat frequency, specific work in the muscles and many others.