Emperor Penguins Breeding on Iceshelves
We describe a new breeding behaviour discovered in emperor penguins; utilizing satellite and aerial-survey observations four emperor penguin breeding colonies have been recorded as existing on ice-shelves. Emperors have previously been considered as a sea-ice obligate species, with 44 of the 46 colo...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3885707 2023-05-15T13:56:32+02:00 Emperor Penguins Breeding on Iceshelves Fretwell, Peter T. Trathan, Phil N. Wienecke, Barbara Kooyman, Gerald L. 2014-01-08 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3885707 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085285 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3885707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085285 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2014 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085285 2014-01-12T01:54:13Z We describe a new breeding behaviour discovered in emperor penguins; utilizing satellite and aerial-survey observations four emperor penguin breeding colonies have been recorded as existing on ice-shelves. Emperors have previously been considered as a sea-ice obligate species, with 44 of the 46 colonies located on sea-ice (the other two small colonies are on land). Of the colonies found on ice-shelves, two are newly discovered, and these have been recorded on shelves every season that they have been observed, the other two have been recorded both on ice-shelves and sea-ice in different breeding seasons. We conduct two analyses; the first using synthetic aperture radar data to assess why the largest of the four colonies, for which we have most data, locates sometimes on the shelf and sometimes on the sea-ice, and find that in years where the sea-ice forms late, the colony relocates onto the ice-shelf. The second analysis uses a number of environmental variables to test the habitat marginality of all emperor penguin breeding sites. We find that three of the four colonies reported in this study are in the most northerly, warmest conditions where sea-ice is often sub-optimal. The emperor penguin’s reliance on sea-ice as a breeding platform coupled with recent concerns over changed sea-ice patterns consequent on regional warming, has led to their designation as “near threatened” in the IUCN red list. Current climate models predict that future loss of sea-ice around the Antarctic coastline will negatively impact emperor numbers; recent estimates suggest a halving of the population by 2052. The discovery of this new breeding behaviour at marginal sites could mitigate some of the consequences of sea-ice loss; potential benefits and whether these are permanent or temporary need to be considered and understood before further attempts are made to predict the population trajectory of this iconic species. Text Antarc* Antarctic Emperor penguins Ice Shelf Ice Shelves Sea ice PubMed Central (PMC) Antarctic The Antarctic PLoS ONE 9 1 e85285 |
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Research Article Fretwell, Peter T. Trathan, Phil N. Wienecke, Barbara Kooyman, Gerald L. Emperor Penguins Breeding on Iceshelves |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
We describe a new breeding behaviour discovered in emperor penguins; utilizing satellite and aerial-survey observations four emperor penguin breeding colonies have been recorded as existing on ice-shelves. Emperors have previously been considered as a sea-ice obligate species, with 44 of the 46 colonies located on sea-ice (the other two small colonies are on land). Of the colonies found on ice-shelves, two are newly discovered, and these have been recorded on shelves every season that they have been observed, the other two have been recorded both on ice-shelves and sea-ice in different breeding seasons. We conduct two analyses; the first using synthetic aperture radar data to assess why the largest of the four colonies, for which we have most data, locates sometimes on the shelf and sometimes on the sea-ice, and find that in years where the sea-ice forms late, the colony relocates onto the ice-shelf. The second analysis uses a number of environmental variables to test the habitat marginality of all emperor penguin breeding sites. We find that three of the four colonies reported in this study are in the most northerly, warmest conditions where sea-ice is often sub-optimal. The emperor penguin’s reliance on sea-ice as a breeding platform coupled with recent concerns over changed sea-ice patterns consequent on regional warming, has led to their designation as “near threatened” in the IUCN red list. Current climate models predict that future loss of sea-ice around the Antarctic coastline will negatively impact emperor numbers; recent estimates suggest a halving of the population by 2052. The discovery of this new breeding behaviour at marginal sites could mitigate some of the consequences of sea-ice loss; potential benefits and whether these are permanent or temporary need to be considered and understood before further attempts are made to predict the population trajectory of this iconic species. |
format |
Text |
author |
Fretwell, Peter T. Trathan, Phil N. Wienecke, Barbara Kooyman, Gerald L. |
author_facet |
Fretwell, Peter T. Trathan, Phil N. Wienecke, Barbara Kooyman, Gerald L. |
author_sort |
Fretwell, Peter T. |
title |
Emperor Penguins Breeding on Iceshelves |
title_short |
Emperor Penguins Breeding on Iceshelves |
title_full |
Emperor Penguins Breeding on Iceshelves |
title_fullStr |
Emperor Penguins Breeding on Iceshelves |
title_full_unstemmed |
Emperor Penguins Breeding on Iceshelves |
title_sort |
emperor penguins breeding on iceshelves |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3885707 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085285 |
geographic |
Antarctic The Antarctic |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic The Antarctic |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Emperor penguins Ice Shelf Ice Shelves Sea ice |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Emperor penguins Ice Shelf Ice Shelves Sea ice |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3885707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085285 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085285 |
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PLoS ONE |
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9 |
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e85285 |
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