Gentoo penguins in a colony: The bird in the middle watches over two chicks and carries a GPS-depth logger which was fixed to the plumage. The tape shows distinct signs of the animal’s most recent dive when the penguin was hunting in more than 100 metres depth. (Credit: Petra Quillfeldt)

How Seabirds Share Their Habitat

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2011) — When different species of seabirds share a habitat with limited sources of food, they must differ in their feeding habits. This specialisation is known by biologists as an "ecological niche." Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell have investigated how flexible these ecological niches really are. They discovered that the preying habits of diving seabirds are very different, both in location and timing, within species as well as between different species.

Ecological niches are not inflexible; they are affected by different habitats and the need to avoid competition with neighbours or evade predators, and also lead to different forms of behaviour within a single species.
Seabirds are an excellent species for studying the question of how animals share the limited supply of food in their habitat. Seabirds must live on land during the breeding season, and over this period they have to share space and food with many other animals. The birds breed in nesting colonies, often in confined spaces that provide protection from predators -- the food supply, however, is widely distributed throughout the sea off the coast. The birds must leave the colony to find food and then return to the islands to feed their chicks.

The scientists wanted to know how several species, similar in their demands, are able to breed together on an island and what exactly the differences in their ecological niches are. Using GPS-depth loggers that allow scientists to track birds detailed in three dimensions, researchers in the past have discovered the hunting areas and depths of several diving seabirds, such as penguins and cormorants, but always only for sample colonies. Until now it has been unknown whether these data can be transferred to entire species.

On New Island, part of the Faulkland Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology used GPS-depth loggers to comprehensively study complete a comprehensive study of the hunting habits of four diving seabirds: three species of penguins -- Gentoo penguins, Rock Hopper penguins and Magellan penguins -- and Imperial shags. In addition, the researchers compared two colonies of each of the three penguin species.

"The results were very surprising," says biologist Dr. Juan Masello. "Based on the ecological niche theory, we had expected especially strong differences between species. However, the data show that the spatial and temporal distribution of birds within the species can also differ greatly."

Magellan penguins, for example, used hunting areas about 40 kilometres apart from each other, whereas the two colonies on land were only two kilometres apart. In contrast, one of the Gentoo penguin colonies often hunted at night, while the other neighboured colony hunted only in the daytime. In this way, the colonies avoid an overlap in feeding areas and small-scale differences are used effectively." adds Dr. Petra Quillfeldt. In the colony of Imperial shags, the females and males hunt both at different times and places: in the mornings, the females go hunting near the coast, and in the afternoons, the males hunt in the open sea. Thus the different species of seabirds found different solutions to avoid competing with their own species for food.

"Of course, food is not the only factor that determines the distribution of birds around the island," Dr. Quillfeldt explains. "In two of the penguin species, it was very clear that the animals avoided swimming near a seal colony where they could themselves become the prey. This dangerous zone also contributed to the spatial separation of the birds in the sea."

This is the first comprehensive study showing the ecological niches within a species, as well as between species, over the same period of time. It shows that seabirds of different species, as well as colonies of the same species, differ in their temporal and spatial distribution and that they search for food in different areas of the ocean, often far apart, and at different depths and temperatures. The ecological niches of the species studied are far less rigid than previously thought. Even small differences in habitat or in behaviour, or the need to avoid competition or predators, contribute to this specialisation.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, via AlphaGalileo.

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Journal Reference:

1. Masello, J.F., Mundry, R., Poisbleau, M., Demongin, L., Voigt, C., Wikelski, M. & Quillfeldt P. Diving seabirds share foraging space and time within and among species.. Ecosphere, December 20, 2010 DOI: 10.1890/ES/0-001031

Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. "How seabirds share their habitat." ScienceDaily 13 January 2011. 17 January 2011 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2011/01/110111132213.htm>.

That Controvery Over Flipper Bands

King Penguins. Flipper-banded penguins have a 16% lower survival rate and produce 39% fewer chicks than non-banded birds. (Credit: iStockphoto/Benjamin Goode)

Flipper Bands Hinder King Penguins

ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2011) — A team of researchers headed by Yvon Le Maho, CNRS researcher at the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (CNRS / Université de Strasbourg) and member of the Académie des Sciences, has demonstrated that, over a ten year period, flipper-banded penguins have a 16% lower survival rate and produce 39% fewer chicks than non-banded birds. These results were obtained through electronic monitoring of one hundred king penguins on Possession Island in the southern hemisphere. As a precautionary measure, French researchers have stopped banding penguins since the 1990s.

Supported (1) by the Institut Polaire Français Paul-Émile Victor, this work was carried out in collaboration with Oslo and Tromsø universities in Norway, the Tour du Valat biological station and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle and has been published on 13 January in Nature, also featuring on the cover of the journal.

Penguins are excellent indicators of the state of health of marine ecosystems and thus make it possible to better understand the impact of climate change on biodiversity. As a matter of fact, these top predators of the Southern Ocean are at the summit of the marine food chain. Their population dynamics is thus conditioned by the evolution of marine resources; any modifications arising in their survival and breeding success reflect to a large extent the impact of climate on lower links in the food chain (fish, zooplankton, etc.). Until now, most of the available data has been obtained by banding the animals being monitored. However, unlike other birds, it is impossible for anatomical reasons to fit bands to penguins' feet. Researchers therefore fit them to their flippers. These metal bands can be read at a distance, thus avoiding any stress involved in recapturing the penguins. The use of such flipper bands however raises serious questions as they can have deleterious effects on the animal. These effects include injuring flipper tissues or increasing energy expenditure while swimming or fishing due to the hydrodynamic drag effect on the flippers that the penguins use to propel themselves. Short-term studies (maximum one year) have concluded that banding has no impact. As a precaution, certain researchers, including French teams, have abandoned it but it is still used throughout the world. In addition, some scientists continue to rely on data from banded birds.

For the first time, a French-Norwegian team has conducted a long-term study, the objective of which was to monitor, over a ten year period, one hundred king penguins with electronic tags implanted under their skin, half of which were also fitted with a flipper band. The penguins were identified individually by radiofrequency using antennas buried along their passageways, between the colony and the sea. This electronic monitoring system was developed in 1998 by Le Maho's team at the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (CNRS / Université de Strasbourg). The researchers focused on two key parameters for monitoring the evolution of this penguin population: their mortality rate and their breeding success. Their results unequivocally prove the significant impact of flipper banding, which affects both the survival and breeding of these animals, in the medium and long term. The banded population's growth rate is a fortiori also affected. In fact, over the last decade, the 50 banded penguins produced 39% fewer chicks (from laying until the chicks can feed for themselves). In addition, their mortality was 16% higher than that of non-banded birds.

The banded birds arrive later at their reproduction sites and, after having been banded for 10 years, they continue to have a delayed breeding cycle on account of their longer foraging trips. This study thus refutes the theory that penguins get used to such bands after a certain time. Another very important result is that banded penguins do not react in the same manner as non-banded penguins to climatic variability (mainly sea temperature). This is why, depending on the year and the environmental conditions, the effect of banding is more or less perceptible. "In favorable periods, when the sea temperature is low and food resources are abundant, there is virtually no difference between banded and non-banded animals," explains Claire Saraux, the leading author of this article. "On the other hand, when the sea temperature is higher, the penguins need to forage further to find their food and banded birds then stay longer at sea." These results thus demonstrate the need for long-term studies to test the possible effects of methods used to monitor animal populations.

From an ethical point of view, this study calls into question the numerous banding campaigns that are still ongoing. These results are obviously specific to penguins and cannot be generalized to foot-banded flying birds. Furthermore, since banded and non-banded penguins do not react in the same way to changes in sea temperature, this study demonstrates that flipper banding introduces an important bias in the study of climatic effect on the dynamics of penguin populations. Since current knowledge of this effect is based to a large extent on data from banded birds, such information must therefore be considered with caution.

(1) This work benefited from the financial and/or logistical support of CNRS, IPEV, TAAFs, the Fondation Bettencourt-Schueller and the Fondation des Treilles.
Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange), via AlphaGalileo.

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Journal Reference:

1. Claire Saraux, Céline Le Bohec, Joël M. Durant, Vincent A. Viblanc, Michel Gauthier-Clerc, David Beaune, Young-Hyang Park, Nigel G. Yoccoz, Nils C. Stenseth, Yvon Le Maho. Reliability of flipper-banded penguins as indicators of climate change. Nature, 2011; 469 (7329): 203 DOI: 10.1038/nature09630

CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange). "Flipper bands hinder king penguins." ScienceDaily 16 January 2011. 17 January 2011 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2011/01/110114155243.htm>.

Future Climate for Penguins Discussed

A pair of chinstrap penguins in Antarctica. New research suggests that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue on their current trajectory, Earth may return to a climate of tens of millions of years ago when the Antarctic ice sheet did not exist. (Credit: © UCAR, Photo by Andrew Watt)

Earth's Hot Past Could Be Prologue to Future Climate

ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2011) — The magnitude of climate change during Earth's deep past suggests that future temperatures may eventually rise far more than projected if society continues its pace of emitting greenhouse gases, a new analysis concludes.

The study, by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl, will appear as a "Perspectives" piece in this week's issue of the journal Science.
Building on recent research, the study examines the relationship between global temperatures and high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tens of millions of years ago. It warns that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate through the end of this century, atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas will reach levels that existed about 30 million to 100 million years ago, when global temperatures averaged about 29 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.
Kiehl said that global temperatures may gradually rise over centuries or millennia in response to the carbon dioxide. The elevated levels of carbon dioxide may remain in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years, according to recent computer model studies of geochemical processes that the study cites.
The study also indicates that the planet's climate system, over long periods of times, may be at least twice as sensitive to carbon dioxide than currently projected by computer models, which have generally focused on shorter-term warming trends. This is largely because even sophisticated computer models have not yet been able to incorporate critical processes, such as the loss of ice sheets, that take place over centuries or millennia and amplify the initial warming effects of carbon dioxide.
"If we don't start seriously working toward a reduction of carbon emissions, we are putting our planet on a trajectory that the human species has never experienced," says Kiehl, a climate scientist who specializes in studying global climate in Earth's geologic past. "We will have committed human civilization to living in a different world for multiple generations."
The Perspectives article pulls together several recent studies that look at various aspects of the climate system, while adding a mathematical approach by Kiehl to estimate average global temperatures in the distant past. Its analysis of the climate system's response to elevated levels of carbon dioxide is supported by previous studies that Kiehl cites. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor.

Learning from Earth's past

Kiehl focused on a fundamental question: when was the last time Earth's atmosphere contained as much carbon dioxide as it may by the end of this century?
If society continues on its current pace of increasing the burning of fossil fuels, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are expected to reach about 900 to 1,000 parts per million by the end of this century. That compares with current levels of about 390 parts per million, and pre-industrial levels of about 280 parts per million.
Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in Earth's atmosphere, it is critical for regulating Earth's climate. Without carbon dioxide, the planet would freeze over. But as atmospheric levels of the gas rise, which has happened at times in the geologic past, global temperatures increase dramatically and additional greenhouse gases, such as water vapor and methane, enter the atmosphere through processes related to evaporation and thawing. This leads to further heating.
Kiehl drew on recently published research that, by analyzing molecular structures in fossilized organic materials, showed that carbon dioxide levels likely reached 900 to 1,000 parts per million about 35 million years ago.
At that time, temperatures worldwide were substantially warmer than at present, especially in polar regions -- even though the Sun's energy output was slightly weaker. The high levels of carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere kept the tropics at about 9-18 degrees F (5-10 degrees C) above present-day temperatures. The polar regions were some 27-36 degrees F (15-20 degrees C) above present-day temperatures.
Kiehl applied mathematical formulas to calculate that Earth's average annual temperature 30 to 40 million years ago was about 88 degrees F (31 degrees C) -- substantially higher than the pre-industrial average temperature of about 59 degrees F (15 degrees C).

Twice the heat?

The study also found that carbon dioxide may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models of global climate.
The world's leading computer models generally project that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would have a heating impact in the range of 0.5 to 1.0 degree C watts per square meter. (The unit is a measure of the sensitivity of Earth's climate to changes in greenhouse gases.) However, the published data show that the comparable impact of carbon dioxide 35 million years ago amounted to about 2 degrees C watts per square meter.
Computer models successfully capture the short-term effects of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But the record from Earth's geologic past also encompasses longer-term effects, which accounts for the discrepency in findings. The eventual melting of ice sheets, for example, leads to additional heating because exposed dark surfaces of land or water absorb more heat than ice sheets.
"This analysis shows that on longer time scales our planet may be much more sensitive to greenhouse gases than we thought," Kiehl says.
Climate scientists are currently adding more sophisticated depictions of ice sheets and other factors to computer models. As these improvements come on line, Kiehl believes that the computer models and the paleoclimate record will be in closer agreement, showing that the impacts of carbon dioxide on climate over time will likely be far more substantial than recent research has indicated.
Because carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere at a rate that has never been experienced, Kiehl could not estimate how long it would take for the planet to fully heat up. However, a rapid warm-up would make it especially difficult for societies and ecosystems to adapt, he says.
If emissions continue on their current trajectory, "the human species and global ecosystems will be placed in a climate state never before experienced in human history," the paper states.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jeffrey Kiehl. Lessons from Earth's Past. Science, 2011; 331 (6014): 158-159 DOI: 10.1126/science.1199380

National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. "Earth's hot past could be prologue to future climate." ScienceDaily 14 January 2011. 17 January 2011 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2011/01/110113141607.htm>.

Fossil Hunt in Antarctica

Hom

Photo Credit: Patrick O'Connor Paleontologists led by Ross MacPhee look for fossils on Snow Island in the South Shetland Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula. MacPhee is particularly interested in marsupial fossils that could fill out the picture of their dispersal through the Southern Hemisphere.  Reverse course Paleontologists seek evidence that marsupials arose in Antarctica By Peter Rejcek, Antarctic Sun Editor Posted January 14, 2011   Ever see the logo for the Sherwin-Williams Company? It shows a bucket of paint tipped over above the planet. The paint covers the Northern Hemisphere, oozing and dripping south. Ross MacPhee thinks it’s a perfect metaphor for the disrespect the Southern Hemisphere receives from some of his colleagues regarding the evolution and distribution of mammals tens of millions of years ago when Antarctica was part of a larger continent called Gondwana. This austral summer he’ll make a fourth attempt to find mammalian fossils that at least prove some kinds of these land animals were present on the continent long before Antarctica finally separated from other land masses and started to go into a deep freeze 40 million years ago. Before then, Antarctica was sandwiched between South America and Australia, all remnants of the former supercontinent Gondwana. MacPhee is particularly interested in the history of Australian marsupials, believing that their ancestors emerged in South America and traveled across Antarctica to Australia sometime in the neighborhood of 80 million years ago. “It was relatively easy, not only for the small guys like the marsupials, but also bigger ones like some of the southern ungulates [hoofed animals] to get across the land bridge connecting Antarctica and South America and settle down until Antarctic winter came in permanently about 40 million years ago,” MacPhee said during an interview at the American Museum of Natural History, where he is a curator in the mammalogy department. Photo Credit: Patrick O'Connor Fossilized wood found on James Ross Island. The problem is that fossil record from Antarctica is spotty at best, especially considering most of the continent is entombed in ice. “That leaves you with a few little windows of seasonally bare ground on the Antarctic Peninsula and nearby islands,” MacPhee noted. One of the better windows is on Seymour Island off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Almost 30 years ago, U.S. scientists in the journal Science described the first fossil land mammal found in Antarctica, belonging to the extinct marsupial family Polydolopidae. The fossils were recovered from rocks about 45 million years old. The find strengthened the theory that Australian marsupials originated from South American species that dispersed across Antarctica prior to about 65 million years ago, MacPhee said. Marsupials are mammals that are distinguished by the pouches many of them use to carry their young — the most well-known examples being kangaroos. More recently, a study published last summer in the online journal PLoS Biology uses DNA data to suggest that Australian marsupials evolved from a common South American ancestor well before the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs famously met their end. Photo Credit: AMNH Ross MacPhee MacPhee, “wildly” but enthusiastically speculating on what he might find during his upcoming expedition, said the possible discovery of marsupial fossils on Seymour or neighboring islands as primitive as those in South America could indicate that the divergence (or origin) of Australian marsupials actually began in Antarctica rather than South America proper. “It would be damn interesting. It implies that Antarctica has been more than a superhighway for species to occasionally traverse,” he said. “It means that during times like the late Cretaceous, when it was much warmer than today, important episodes in mammal evolution might have happened there.” Antarctica of 80 million years ago would hardly resemble the frozen wasteland of today. Some regions would have sported highly diverse vegetation, based on paleobotanical evidence. That means a temperate climate, which favors mammals. “Since there was a great variety of plants, that implies there would have been a commensurately great variety of arthropods and insects, which means there would have been all kinds of available niches for mammals — small mammals, in particular — that eat insects,” MacPhee said.

National Science Foundation
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Julia Clarke, as associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, led a team five years ago that reported that close relatives of at least one order of modern birds co-existed with dinosaurs.
The new species, Vegavis iaai, was collected in 1992 by scientists from Argentina on Vega Island off the Antarctic Peninsula. Clarke and her U.S. and Argentine team re-examined the material more than a decade later.
It offered some of the best fossil evidence to date that linked modern bird divergence, the spread of today’s species, before the K-T boundary — when geologic time turned the page from the Cretaceous to the Tertiary period after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.
MacPhee said such evidence about the Vega waterfowl helps turn the Sherwin-Williams model upside down. “It does suggest the southern end of the world is not as biogeographically irrelevant as it’s been previously — inadvertently perhaps — thought to be.”

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Map of the South Shetland Islands.

Clarke will join MacPhee and several other paleontologists, including dinosaur fossil experts, on this latest expedition to the islands near the Antarctic Peninsula in February 2011.
“I’m really excited to have the opportunity after looking at all of the Antarctic material to go down there,” Clarke said. “I’ve never been to Antarctica, and I’m very excited to see what we’ll find.”
MacPhee hopes the fourth time is the charm. His first try in 2007 was largely frustrated by heavy snow on the ground that made finding the small fossils he would expect to find nearly impossible. The ancient marsupials would be about the size of modern shrews, up to 100 grams in weight — something that could easily fit in the palm of your hand. [See previous article: Bridge to the past.]
A freak storm in 2008 wrecked the team’s field camp, forcing an early end to their season. Last year, sea ice conditions prevented the research vessel carrying the scientists to access the islands except for two days. [See previous article: A big blow.]
Despite the setbacks, MacPhee is willing to commit another two months to his search for mammalian fossils.

Photo Credit: N. Adam Smith

Julia Clarke

“I feel it’s important. People have to be willing to put up with some pain and suffering if they have any expectations of being successful,” he said philosophically. “Antarctica is not going to be kind. We already know that with regard to how hard it has been to collect mammalian or indeed any vertebrate fossils.”
The team hopes to begin its search on Vega Island, where Clarke’s avian fossils were found.
Other likely expedition sites include nearby Seymour and James Ross islands, where others have found fossils from younger geological periods. In fact, Argentinean scientists recently uncovered ancient turtle fossils on Seymour Island dating from roughly 45 million years ago that don’t belong to any species known to live in the region during that time period.
The scientists expect to spend long hours on their hands and knees, crawling along the ground hoping to spy interesting-looking bits.
“I’m somewhat sanguine, although you have to recognize the realities. That next rock that you needed to kick over to find that tooth that was going to explain all of this might be the very rock that you ignore,” he said.
“For my purposes it’s worth doing, because I think the Antarctic part of mammalian divergence and diversification story in the latter part of the Cretaceous is the part that we know least about. Virtually any evidence would suggest new possibilities.”

Source

Indian, Australian joint team studying penguin evolution

Sydney, Jan 7 (IANS) A joint team of Indian and Australian scientists is studying molecular changes in Adelie, a penguin species commonly found along the entire Antarctic coast, triggered by global warming.
The experts are also looking at the larger issue of whether climate change drives evolution.

Australian team leader David Lambert is collaborating with Siva Swaminathan, who leads the Indian side, under the aegis of the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF).

The AISRF was established in 2006 to facilitate and support science and technology research cooperation between the two countries.

'When global temperatures change (up or down), many animals do not biologically adapt to that change, but simply move to where things are warmer or cooler,' Lambert said.

'With global warming, Adelie penguins are not able to move to a cooler place since they already live in the coldest place on earth. So, they have no option but to adapt,' he said.

In yet another collaborative programme, Arnold Dekker from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) led an Australian team at a recent workshop with Indian researchers to monitor ocean health through remote sensing.

Dekker said researchers use satellite-based observation of earth's coasts and oceans to monitor ocean colour, which arises from changes in algae, suspended and dissolved organic material.

'Ocean colour helps us understand the interactions between aquatic ecosystems, climatic factors and human impacts,' he said.

The experts at the workshop agreed that understanding these interactions can help in forming better policies for protecting coastal reefs and ecosystems from potentially harmful disturbances caused by human activity and environmental stresses.

Source

Happy New Year!

Penguin Evolution Revisited

By John Gibb on Sun, 26 Dec 2010

News: Dunedin

Click photo to enlarge

University of Otago geologist Assoc Prof Ewan Fordyce examines a fossilised penguin wing bone that shows signs of a grooves heat-retention mechanism. Photo by Jane Dawber.

Most people think of penguins as cold-water or polar birds, but latest research linked to the University of Otago sheds new light on that traditional view. A research paper published last week in British-based journal Biology Letters also offers new insights into the evolutionary development of penguins.
The paper's first author is Dr Daniel Thomas, a New Zealander who is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
His recent Otago doctorate was supervised by Associate Prof Ewan Fordyce, who heads the Otago University geology department.
Prof Fordyce, who also contributed to the paper, said it had long been believed that penguins thrived by adapting to increasingly cold conditions, including in the now largely ice-covered Antarctic.
This region, which had earlier been semi-tropical, became glaciated about 34 million years ago.
However, the paper points out that, much earlier, about 49 million years ago, penguins lived in much warmer conditions, when some ocean surface temperatures were about 25degC.
And it was at that stage that penguins evolved a key heat-retention mechanism that effectively pre-adapted them to thrive in later, much colder, conditions, including in the Antarctic.
It seemed ''counterintuitive'' for such mechanisms to evolve at a time of global warmth, but researchers suspected that the evolutionary change occurred then ''to allow penguins to forage for food in cool depths, far below the warm surface waters'', Prof Fordyce said.
Faced with a ''constant threat from hypothermia'' in deep, cold waters, penguins had developed a ''counter-current heat exchanger'', which managed the flow of blood along the wing and significantly improved heat retention and energy efficiency.
Wings were used to help propel the birds through the water.
Prof Fordyce said grooves in fossilised wing bones showed evidence of this mechanism.
By the mechanism, warmer blood that was being moved out to the wings was also used to heat the cooler blood coming back from the wings before it re-entered the penguin body core.
Dr Thomas was a ''very, very good researcher'' and the study highlighted the ''power of fossils'' to show how animals had evolved, Prof Fordyce said.
- john.gibb@odt.co.nz

Source 

Busy Adeliés

Penguin Update from Dr. Dee Boersma

 

Hello Penguin Lovers and Supporters --

 

Here's a penguin update. Chicks have hatched!! We know that the Punta Tombo colony covers 400 hectares and the update tells you how many active nests we estimate from survey data in 1987 and 2006. Read to see what you helped us accomplish. Thanks for your interest in the penguins of patagonia and Happy Holidays.

P. Dee Boersma, Ph.D

Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science

 

Department of Biology, Box 351800

University of Washington

Seattle, WA 98195-1800

Phone: 206-616-2185

Fax: 206-221-7839

boersma@u.washington.edu

_______________________________________________
Penguin_update mailing list
Penguin_update@u.washington.edu
http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/penguin_update

 

update_Dec_2010.pdf 824K   View   Download

Robot to Follow Penguins as They Hunt for Food

Photo Courtesy: Mark Moline

Above: Photo Credit: Peter Rejcek Adélie penguins near Palmer Station.

Left: Scientists deploy a REMUS AUV over the side of a small boat off the coast of Florida. Mark Moline will employ a similar instrument in Antarctica to track Adélie penguins as they hunt for food during their breeding season to learn about the places they favor.

Bird watching

Autonomous robot to follow penguins as they hunt for food

By Peter Rejcek, Antarctic Sun Editor

Posted November 19, 2010

Mark Moline was working on his PhD in the early 1990s when he was last doing research along the Antarctic Peninsula — the first graduate student of the nascent Palmer Long Term Ecological Research (PAL LTER) program .

Scientists with the PAL LTER were only just getting a handle on the marine ecosystem of the northwestern peninsula region at the time. They knew the sea ice that waxed and waned on the ocean waters with the seasons played a key role, serving as an important habitat for critters from Adélie penguins to shrimplike krill.
What they didn’t know then was that the region was already undergoing remarkable changes. A warmer and moist subantarctic climate was shoving the colder and drier conditions farther south.

Now the researchers understand the northern Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than just about anywhere on the planet. Average winter temperatures have increased about 6.5 degrees Celsius since the 1950s, rising more than five times faster than the global average.

Deep, warm water is flooding onto the relatively shallow continental shelf due to complex interactions between the ocean and atmosphere. That’s affected the lifecycle of winter sea ice, which on average has dropped by three months per year, meaning it forms later and melts earlier. Year-round sea ice has virtually disappeared.

The sea-ice dependent species have also taken a hit. The most obvious and well-documented is the plight of the Adélies. If current conditions persist, the local colonies will be all but extinct by the end of the decade.
That’s the Antarctic Peninsula today, about 17 years after Moline last visited. Now a professor at California Polytechnic State University and director of the school’s Center for Coastal Marine Sciences , Moline will return to the Ice this season to help answer an important question about Adélie ecology in the context of today’s changing climate.

Namely: Why do they forage in the locations that they do?

And the best way to figure that out is to follow the adult penguins while they are busy searching for food for their young chicks during the height of the fledgling period in December and January.

Photo Credit: Peter Rejcek

Adélie penguins near Palmer Station.

Photo Courtesy: Mark Moline

Divers handle the AUV in more temperate waters than what the robot will swim through in Antarctica.

For that job Moline will employ a REMUS autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) whose suite of sensors will tell scientists about the oceanographic conditions where the penguins hunt, as well as the biomass of potential prey in the area — how much food is available to eat.

“The underwater vehicle matches up almost identically to the birds’ endurance, depth and speed characteristics,” Moline explained. “It does what a penguin does in terms of its foraging journey. It’s an ideal tool for going out and characterizing these birds.”

Moline is collaborating with Bill Fraser , who heads the seabird component of the PAL LTER program. Members of Fraser’s team spend each austral summer working out of the U.S. Antarctic Program’s smallest research base, Palmer Station , tracking and observing the Adélies and other bird populations.

The Palmer Station “birders” use satellite tags to track individual penguins. The researchers have known for some time the Adélies favor various canyons along the continental shelf where the bathymetry, or underwater topography, induces an upwelling of warmer water.

The conditions seem to produce a hotspot of biological activity, offering a reliable and long-term source of food for the penguins.

Fraser said that Moline’s instrument should provide information to test hypotheses about these hotspots and better define the conditions that exist. “These data should also provide some predictive capabilities, by which I mean they should give us some idea about where Adélie colonies may emerge in the southern [Western Antarctic Peninsula] as warming continues,” Fraser said.

The canyons near Palmer Station and similar features down the peninsula have been explored to some degree by a different AUV called a Slocum glider. However, the REMUS vehicle will be able to follow the birds in “real-time” based on location information from the satellite tags.

“That’s the first time that’s been done,” Moline said. “The animals can tell us where they’re going, but the vehicles can tell us why they’re going there.”

Moline and his colleagues have deployed the AUVs around the world in all sorts of environments, logging more than 5,000 kilometers under water on more than 250 missions.

Photo Courtesy: Mark Moline

The REMUS vehicle has logged more than 250 missions.

Their research includes work in the Arctic off Svalbard, Norway, where the intrusion of North Atlantic Ocean water into the region is potentially disrupting the food web. One bird species, the little auk, which superficially resembles a penguin, was found to be diving deeper in the water to find more nutritious prey.

“It’s a similar study but in a different area,” Moline noted.
For the Antarctic study — a one-year field project funded by the National Science Foundation’s   EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) program — Moline and technician Ian Robbins will spend about five weeks at Palmer Station. Every couple of days they will release the AUV to hunt with the penguins, as well as to characterize areas where the penguins aren’t going.

“One of the efforts here is to not only characterize the penguins’ habitat, per say, but also do it in the context of this large-scale change that is occurring,” Moline said.

Moline said he hopes the technology will prove its worth on this trial project so that it can be used in the future to track the other animal populations in the region, including the gentoo and chinstrap penguins, subantarctic species that are growing in numbers as the Adélies decline.

“It seems like these tools are prime time for polar regions,” Moline said. “We’ve been trying to push these technologies in the polar regions that are traditionally under sampled from a marine perspective. We’re trying to break some new ground here with some new technology.”

In addition to the collaboration with Fraser’s Polar Oceans Research Group, Moline’s data will be used as part of a NASA program involving several institutions that links satellite data of changes in the ocean to penguin foraging.

All of this effort will eventually feed into the bigger picture of how climate change is affecting the ecosystem of the Antarctic Peninsula, according to Moline.

“It’s pretty amazing that large-scale changes can occur during one’s career,” he said.
NSF-funded research in this story: Mark Moline, California Polytechnic State University, Award No. 1019838 . 
Source

'Fraser's Penguins': Fen Montaigne's account of the Adélie penguin and its rapidly warming home

"Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica" is journalist and writer Fen Montaigne's breathtaking account of the life and times of the Adélie penguin of Antarctica, a species whose storm-tossed home is warming up faster than nearly any spot on earth, thanks to global warming. Montaigne will discuss his book at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Town Hall Seattle.

By Karen Gaudette

Special to The Seattle Times

Author appearance

Fen Montaigne

The author of "Fraser's Penguins" will discuss his book at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Ave., Seattle. Tickets are $5 in advance at www.brownpapertickets.com, at 800-838-3006, and at the door. 

 

The best books about far-off places make the exotic relatable, make the unimaginable plausible. In "Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica" (Henry Holt, 288 pp., $26), journalist and travel writer Fen Montaigne does both. He puts us up on deck as life-ending stormy waters roil off the coast of Antarctica; puts us on the ice as he's attacked (and describes attacks) by some of the world's most mysterious creatures; bundles us in warmth as we tumble out into an otherworldly, snowy, icy, chilling, breathtaking expanse.
The year is 2005. Montaigne is tailing longtime ecologist Bill Fraser as he conducts his ongoing research of Adélie penguins during breeding season on the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula. Over five months, he sees firsthand what Fraser has observed since his studies began in the early 1970s — that this fragile, starkly beautiful ecosystem is warming faster than nearly any spot on Earth (an 11 degrees Fahrenheit winter heat rise in the past 60 years) and becoming inhospitable to many of the creatures that have called it home for thousands of years, including the tuxedoed, iconic Adélie penguin.

Melting sea ice means less krill, which means fewer of the Adélie, fewer of its predator, the brown skua, and an invasion of warmer-weather gentoo penguins. By focusing on the imperiled future of one Antarctic species, he demonstrates the interconnected, questionable future for them all (and in turn, the rest of the planet).
The astonishing vignettes woven throughout are not for the squeamish or faint of heart. Montaigne's descriptions are painstakingly clear, which means that brutal moments, like a pair of skuas ripping apart a fuzzy penguin chick for dinner, seem real enough to make the reader flinch. His story of orcas smashing up through ice, attempting to nab unsuspecting seals and other potential prey (ponies, dogs, men) generates goose bumps — especially when he names adventurers who have narrowly dodged a similar fate, close enough to feel the "fishy smelling" blast of orca breath.

But the sublime moments are utterly so.

"One evening as we wrapped up our work on Torgersen, Fraser looked at groups of a dozen or two Adélies walking past us on their way from the sea to their colonies. As the overcast skies grew imperceptibly darker, the penguins' white breasts gleamed against the gray cobble, the clinking of their pink feet on the stones reminiscent of wind chimes."

Readers of this book would benefit from keeping Internet access nearby so the snow petrels, leopard seals, great southern petrels and other creatures he mentions (only a few species are pictured) can be better visualized to add gorgeous context. Birders, historians, those concerned about the environment and adventure lovers will find much to savor in this book.

Source

New Paper by David Ainley, et al...

Antarctic Penguin Response to Habitat Change as Earth's Troposphere Reaches 2° C Above Preindustrial Levels

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18 pages .pdf file