By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 03/24/2012 on LiveScience
Published: 03/24/2012 on LiveScience
As the Antarctic Peninsula warms, penguins that live in the area
year-round have a breeding advantage over birds that migrate in.
Gentoo penguins live on the Antarctic Peninsula
year-round, and their numbers are increasing while migratory chinstrap
and Adelie penguins are dwindling in the area. New research by Stony
Brook University researcher Heather Lynch reveals that gentoo penguins
have adapted to warmer temperatures faster than the other two species.
Using field work and satellite imagery, Lynch and her colleagues
tracked colonies of the three penguin species. They found that warming
temperatures triggered penguins to lay their eggs earlier in the season
than normal. Gentoos are able to adapt more quickly because they're
locals, the researchers found. Adelie and chinstrap penguins aren't
aware of the local temperatures until they migrate into the area,
meaning they can't shift their breeding as dramatically.
Gentoo penguins may also have an advantage because they prefer areas
with less sea ice than chinstrap and Adelie penguins. The latter two
species rely more on ice-loving krill as their food source. A long-term study of penguins
published in 2011 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences found that krill density is down as much as 80 percent since
the mid-1970s. Krill depend on algae growing on sea ice for food.
Also in 2011, researchers reported that a small colony of West Antarctic Peninsula emperor penguins had disappeared
in 2009 after about three decades of stability. Warming is also
bringing other changes to the southernmost continent, including
colonization by king crabs.
Lynch published her results in the journals Polar Biology, and
Ecology and Marine Ecology Progress Series and will present her work at a
Stony Brook University workshop for educators on April 10 and 11.
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