Coping with continuous human disturbance in the wild: insights from penguin heart rate response to various stressors ...

• Main Authors: Viblanc, Vincent A, Smith, Andrew D, Gineste, Benoit, Groscolas, René
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2012
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13508621; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13508621

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Background: A central question for ecologists is the extent to which anthropogenic disturbances (e.g. tourism) might impact wildlife and affect the systems under study. From a research perspective, identifying the effects of human disturbance caused by research-related activities is crucial in order to understand and account for potential biases and derive appropriate conclusions from the data. Results: Here, we document a case of biological adjustment to chronic human disturbance in a colonial seabird, the king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus), breeding on remote and protected islands of the Southern ocean. Using heart rate (HR) as a measure of the stress response, we show that, in a colony with areas exposed to the continuous presence of humans (including scientists) for over 50 years, penguins have adjusted to human disturbance and habituated to certain, but not all, types of stressors. When compared to birds breeding in relatively undisturbed areas, ...