Data from: Juvenile emperor penguin range calls for extended conservation measures in the Southern Ocean ...

• Main Authors: Houstin, Aymeric, Zitterbart, Daniel P., Heerah, Karine, Eisen, Olaf, Planas-Bielsa, Victor, Fabry, Ben, Le Bohec, Céline
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Movebank Data Repository 2022
• Subjects: Aptenodytes forsteri; animal movement; animal tracking; Argos; conservation biology; emperor penguin; home range; satellite telemetry; seabirds; Southern Ocean; Weddell; Weddell Sea; Emperor penguins
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5441/001/1.sg2s0f7q; https://www.datarepository.movebank.org/handle/10255/move.1515

To protect the unique and rich biodiversity of the Southern Ocean, conservation measures such as marine protected areas (MPAs) have been implemented. Currently, the establishment of several additional protection zones is being considered based on the known habitat distributions of key species of the ecosystems including emperor penguins and other marine top predators. However, the distribution of such species at sea is often insufficiently sampled. Specifically, current distribution models focus on the habitat range of adult animals and neglect that immatures and juveniles can inhabit different areas. By tracking eight juvenile emperor penguins in the Weddell Sea over one year and performing a meta-analysis including previously known data from other colonies, we show that conservation efforts in the Southern Ocean are insufficient for protecting this highly mobile species, and particularly its juveniles. We find that juveniles spend ~90% of their time outside the boundaries of proposed and existing MPAs, and ...