Feathers as a tool to assess mercury contamination in Gentoo Penguins: variations at the individual level

• Published in: PLOS ONE
• Main Authors: Pedro, Sara, Xavier, Jose C., Tavares, Sílvia, Trathan, Phil, Ratcliffe, Norman, Paiva, Vitor H., Medeiros Mirra, Renata, Pereira, Eduardo, Pardal, Miguel A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science 2015
• Subjects: QL Zoology; Bird Island; Pygoscelis papua
• Online Access: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/80118/; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137622; https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/80118/1/journal.pone.0137622.pdf

Feathers have been widely used to assess mercury contamination in birds as they reflect metal concentrations accumulated between successive moult periods: they are also easy to sample and have minimum impact on the study birds. Moult is considered the major pathway for mercury excretion in seabirds....