Determining Morphometric Differences in Domestic Fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus L. 1758) Tarsometatarsus Using Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence models, which have begun to be used in every field of science in recent years, have also started to come to the forefront in the classification of avians using bones. This study aimed to identify breeds of domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus L. 1758) using morphometric measurements obtained from the tarsometatarsus bone and machine learning. A total of 328 tarsometatarsus specimens from two different modern domestic fowl breeds were used. A model was developed by performing 10 different morphometric measurements on each tarsometatarsus, and 3280 data points were obtained. Before model development, data cleaning and necessary assessments were carried out, and gaps were identified. In pre-processing and data partitioning, 70% of the data was used for training, and 30% was reserved for testing the developed model. To determine the differences between breeds, evaluations were performed using classical supervised learning algorithms in machine learning. Random forest (RF), support vector machine with radial kernel (SVM-RBF), and the generalized linear model (GLM, logistic regression) were used for model development, while model validation was performed using cross-validation (CV) metrics. After model validation, variable importance, feature selection, correlation analysis, dimensionality reduction, and multicollinearity were performed. The developed model, using morphological measurements obtained from the tarsometatarsus, distinguishes between breeds with high accuracy. The discriminative signal is extremely strong, allowing multiple modeling strategies (tree-based, kernel-based, and linear) to perfectly distinguish between the two breeds. Among the morphometric measurements, Ac (extension of the trochlea metatarsi IV) and Bmit (breadth of the middle trochlea) were found to be the strongest distinguishing features. This developed model combines morphometric data and artificial intelligence to offer an innovative method for scaling, accelerating, or improving applications in science. By expanding the model’s database with measurements obtained from the tarsometatarsus bones of different breeds, it was demonstrated that breed differences can be quickly and accurately determined using a minimal number of measurements from tarsometatarsus bones.