Researcher bids fond farewell to her little penguin family

Researcher bids fond farewell to her little penguin family
11/04/2009 4:00:00 AM

AMANDA Peucker has lived and breathed little penguins for more than four years, but the passionate conservationist's work on the Middle Island colony is about to come to an end.

The PhD student is in the process of compiling her exhaustive thesis which has tried to explain the many mysteries surrounding the species' migration and breeding habits.

Mrs Peucker plans to hand in her 40,000-word paper within the next two weeks.

She hopes it will help others protect the species well into the future.

When Mrs Peucker returns to Melbourne and leaves the penguin colony she was instrumental in reviving, it is unclear who will step in to build on her discoveries.

Mrs Peucker's specialty is molecular ecology - a field of evolutionary biology which uses genetics to better understand creatures in the wild and help in their conservation.

Before moving to Deakin University's School of Life and Environmental Sciences in early 2004, Mrs Peucker studied Adelie penguins, yaks, sea anenomes and even humans.

"I probably didn't even realise Middle Island existed until I got here," she said.

After about a year of studying in Warrnambool, she read in The Standard of a new project to use Maremma dogs to ward off predators, such as foxes, from the island.

Concerned the dogs might disrupt the penguins' breeding habits, Mrs Peucker volunteered to monitor what was then a population of just five birds.

Four years later - and despite the dogs accidentally killing about 10 penguins in an apparent game gone wrong - Mrs Peucker has high hopes for the colony.

In December, at the peak of the latest migration, volunteers counted 80 adult penguins and 26 chicks on the island. It was a 70 per cent increase on two years earlier, when 56 adults and seven chicks were found.

Mrs Peucker said she hoped her thesis would help explain changes in the population.

Her study has examined the population genetics of 19 little penguin colonies, stretching from Port Stephens in NSW, down the east coast to Tasmania and all the way to Albany in Western Australia.

"I tested genetic markers to look at each of those colonies to see if they're similar or different," she said.

The penguins can swim as far as 1000 kilometres in their first year after leaving the nest.

Mrs Peucker found evidence to link colonies in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, including the one at Middle Island.

"They are all similar to one another so there's one big population where there must be enough individuals moving between them to spread genes around."

The colonies she tested in South Australia and Western Australia were genetically very different from those on the east coast, and also each other.

"Every single colony I went to (in SA and WA), they're all genetically different to each other. So for some reason, they're all coming back to their birth colony to breed."

Many of the penguins swim as far as 1000 kilometres from their breeding ground but return to the same burrow year after year, she said.

Her work also looked at whether there were subspecies of little penguins, which originated in New Zealand.

Some migrated from New Zealand to the Australian colonies, and some of the Australian colonists have since gone back across the Tasman.

The ones that have returned to New Zealand appear genetically quite different from their ancestors but Mrs Peucker believes the New Zealand and Australian colonies are still of the same species.

She has also devised a way to tell the penguins' gender in the wild by measuring their bill depth, as it is almost impossible to tell what gender they are without dissecting them.

The males have larger bills.

"We think that the males use their bills a lot more for feeding (and) also they're the ones that dig the nest burrow," she said.

As with many doctoral theses, Mrs Peucker has unearthed as many new questions as answers.

With many senior academics from Ms Peucker's department either retiring or returning to Melbourne, it is now the population of penguin researchers that is at risk.

"I'm not sure we are going to get too many PhD students working in penguins any more," she said.

"Once I go back there's no-one really to do the penguin monitoring in Middle Island as well."

Local conservationists, such as John Sutherland and Maremma trainer Dave Williams, have been trained to keep an eye on the colony.

Coastcare/Landcare Warrnambool group leader Don McTaggart said it would be a shame to lose Mrs Peucker from Middle Island, after her many volunteer hours and work to raise the colony's public profile.

"Her work's going to live on in what she's done," Mr McTaggart said.

Warrnambool City Council environmental officer Ian Fitzgibbon said Mrs Peucker's contribution to the project had been "immeasurable".

Mr Fitzgibbon regularly spoke with Deakin University students about the penguin colony in the hope of encouraging others to adopt it as their own project.

Story and image courtesy of The Standard @
http://www.standard.net.au/news/local/news/general/researcher-bids-fond-farewell-to-her-little-penguin-family/1483857.aspx?storypage=0

http://www.standard.net.au/news/local/news/general/researcher-bids-fond-farewell-to-her-little-penguin-family/1483857.aspx?storypage=0

"What we're looking for is a small team of dedicated students, even just people, who can develop skills to conduct (penguin) microchipping and monitor breeding on a fortnightly basis," he said.

Whoever emerges as the next academic champion of Warrnambool's little penguin colony, Mrs Peucker will never forget her countless hours monitoring the birds' progress.

"It's been great to go out and see the chicks grow each fortnight, then leave the nest and then increase in number. It will be sad to leave Middle Island, that's for sure."