PLEA Network

18 November 2015, The Conversation, Shrinking Antarctic glaciers could make Adélie penguins unlikely winners of climate change. Penguin numbers exploded in East Antarctica at the end of the last ice age, according to research published today in BMC Evolutionary Biology. Despite their image as cold-loving creatures, the increase in Adélie penguin numbers seems to be closely linked to shrinking glaciers, raising the possibility the these penguins could be winners from current climate change. Adélie penguins are one of only two penguin species that live on the Antarctic continent. Their cousins, emperor penguins, may be the movie stars, but it is the Adélies that are the bigger players in the Southern Ocean. They outnumber emperors by more than ten to one, with a population of over 7.5 million breeding adults and counting. Given the abundance of Adélie penguins and their crucial role in Southern Ocean ecosystems, there has been a great deal of interest in understanding how the species is likely to respond to future climate change. Sensitivity to sea ice Breeding colonies have been monitored for decades to determine the effects of a changing environment on the penguins. A common finding of many of these studies is that Adélies are highly sensitive to sea ice conditions. Unlike emperor penguins, Adélies do not nest on the sea ice, but they must cross it to reach their nests on land. As everyone knows, penguins are not the most efficient walkers, and in years with a lot of sea ice their journeys to and from the ocean to feed their chicks can become lengthy. With a longer wait between meals chicks are less likely to survive. In an extreme case, extensive sea ice at one breeding colony had a devastating impact in 2014, and not a single chick survived. Read More here