warbler methods

As a group, we observed photos of warblers from the Setophega worksheet. To begin, a series of 12 common plumage characteristics for the warblers were identified. We choose to observe the presence of wing bars, if the bird had a short or long beak, the color of the throat, eye ring color, belly color, feet color, the presence of yellow feathers, the presence of bright colored feathers, rump coloration, the presence of a curved beak, if the bird had more than two feather colors, and if the crown was a different color than the body. We observed the photographs and the skin museum to observe each species and categorize the plumage characteristics.  Coloration differences were shown by changing the color of the cell within the table of data, the color of the cell matched the color of the plumage. The presence of wing bars, yellow feathers, bright colored feathers, more than two feather colors, and a matching crown were indicated by a 1 for yes. A 0 indicated a no. A short beak was categorized by a 0 and a long beak was categorized by a 1. After evaluating each of the 33 species of Warblers for the set of characteristics determined, four of the patterns were chosen to apply to a phylogenetic tree.