Penguins offer insights to Antarctic climate change

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Researchers use the birds as a bioindicator of how the ecosystem is operating

Adelie penguins walk on the ice at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, East Antarctica. Picture: REUTERS

“We are counting penguin nests to understand how many penguins are in a colony, producing chicks every year, and whether that number is going up or down with the environmental conditions,” said Borowicz, of Stony Brook University in New York. Simple counts of individual penguins alongside other methods such as analyses of satellite images tell a nuanced story, with some penguins dubbed “winners” as climate change opens new habitats, while others are forced to seek colder climes.

“Gentoo penguins don’t like sea ice,” said David Ainley, a biologist with the ecological consulting firm HT Harvey & Associates who has been studying penguins for more than 50 years. “They mostly forage over the continental shelf and don’t go far out to sea.” Though widespread Adelie penguins are increasing in number overall, some populations have fallen by more than 65%.On their January expedition to the region, the Stony Brook scientists found that Adelie colonies around the still-icy Weddell Sea had remained stable during the past decade.

In 2020, a team from the British Antarctic Survey discovered 11 new emperor penguin colonies from satellite images, boosting known emperor penguin colonies by 20%.

 

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