Location, environment influence when
gentoo penguin chicks huddle
Date: February 3, 2016
Source: PLOS
![Brown Bluff-2016-Tabarin Peninsula–Gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) 03.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Brown_Bluff-2016-Tabarin_Peninsula%E2%80%93Gentoo_penguin_%28Pygoscelis_papua%29_03.jpg/601px-Brown_Bluff-2016-Tabarin_Peninsula%E2%80%93Gentoo_penguin_%28Pygoscelis_papua%29_03.jpg)
Many penguin species form aggregations
for conserving heat, providing protection, and other purposes. Scientists have
observed gentoo penguins aggregating during the post-guard period, a period
when the parents leave the chicks without waterproof feathers daily to go find
fish, but these aggregations have never been studied over a large spatial range
in the Antarctic. The authors of this study observed the gentoo penguin
aggregation behavior across four study sites along a latitudinal gradient. To
examine the adaptive benefit of aggregations, they observed each colony during
the post-guarding period of the 2012-2013 breeding season using time-lapse
cameras.
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