Changes in diet and morphology of Finnish goshawks from 1960s to 1990s

Abstract 

We studied the morphology of the goshawk in northern Finland by measuring skin and skeletal characters of 258 museum specimens dated between 1961 and 1997. We predicted a decrease in the size of male goshawks from the 1960s because availability of their main prey, grouse, has decreased since then and grouse have been replaced in the diet by smaller prey during the breeding season. Based on the assumption that winter is the most critical period for females, we predicted that female size should have increased because their winter diet consisted of more and more mountain hare, which is a prey generally larger than grouse. Analyses revealed that male size has indeed decreased since the 1960s, while adult females have increased in size. Our data suggest that these morphological shifts were the result of selective pressures due to changes in diet. We also found changes in the (size-independent) shape of the hawks. Relative wing and tail lengths of adult hawks became longer between 1980 and 1990 compared with the 1960–1970 period, while relative juvenile wing and tail lengths tended to decrease. As a result of these morphological changes size dimorphism between the sexes increased from the 1960s to the 1990s.