Study recommends special protection of emperor penguins

OCTOBER 9, 2019

by British Antarctic Survey

In a new study published this week (Wednesday 9 October) in the journal Biological Conservation, an international team of researchers recommends the need for additional measures to protect and conserve one of the most iconic Antarctic species—the emperor penguin (Aptenodyptes forsteri).

The researchers reviewed over 150 studies on the species and its environment as well as its behaviour and character in relation to its breeding biology. Current climate change projections indicate that rising temperatures and changing wind patterns will impact negatively the sea ice on which emperor penguins breed; and some studies indicate that emperor populations will decrease by more than 50% over the current century. The researchers therefore recommend that the IUCN status for the species be escalated to 'vulnerable'; the species is currently listed as 'near threatened' on the IUCN Red List. They conclude that improvements in climate change forecasting in relation to impacts on Antarctic wildlife would be beneficial, and recommend that the emperor penguin should be listed by the Antarctic Treaty as a Specially Protected Species.

Lead author Dr. Philip Trathan, Head of Conservation Biology at British Antarctic Survey, says:

"The current rate of warming in parts of the Antarctic is greater than anything in the recent glaciological record. Though emperor penguins have experienced periods of warming and cooling over their evolutionary history, the current rates of warming are unprecedented."

"Currently, we have no idea how the emperors will adjust to the loss of their primary breeding habitat—sea ice. They are not agile and climbing ashore across steep coastal land forms will be difficult. For breeding, they depend upon sea ice, and in a warming world there is a high probability that this will decrease. Without it, they will have little or no breeding habitat."

Greater protection measures will enable scientists to coordinate research into the penguins' resilience to a range of different threats and stressors.

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Emperor penguins may disappear by the end of this century

By Lakshmi SupriyaJul. 7, 2017 , 10:30 AM

Emperor penguins are known for braving the harsh Antarctic winters, but they might not be able to brave the harsh realities of climate change. That’s the finding of a new study, which suggests that by the end of this century, the world’s largest penguins may be no more. Previous research suggested that rapidly warming air and sea temperatures—which melt sea ice—might cause their numbers to plummet by as much as 19% by 2100. But a new model looks at other factors, including how individual penguins deal with climate change by migrating to places with optimal sea ice coverage. In their model of potential penguin migrations, researchers looked at how far penguins typically go and what factors figure in their decisions. They used data previously collected from Pointe Géologie in Antarctica along with satellite images of penguin colonies that revealed information about their traveling and foraging behavior. The model projects that for the next 2 decades, populations will remain stable, and may even increase slightly as the penguins move to locations that are more habitable. After 2050, it all goes downhill. Although the rate of population decline may vary, by the year 2100 almost all emperor penguins may be gone, the researchers write in an upcoming issue of Biological Conservation. That’s because climate change will have rendered all their habitats inhospitable by then. Gaining endangered status under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the scientists say, may be one way of arresting what might otherwise be their final march.

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Finding new homes won't help emperor penguins cope with climate change

Date: June 7, 2017
Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

If projections for melting Antarctic sea ice through 2100 are correct, the vanishing landscape will strip Emperor penguins of their breeding and feeding grounds and put populations at risk. But like other species that migrate to escape the wrath of climate change, can these iconic animals be spared simply by moving to new locations?

According to new research led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), they cannot. Scientists report that dispersal may help sustain global Emperor penguin populations for a limited time, but, as sea ice conditions continue to deteriorate, the 54 colonies that exist today will face devastating declines by the end of this century. They say the Emperor penguin should be listed as an endangered species. The study was published in the June 6, 2017 edition of the journal Biological Conservation.

"We know from previous studies that sea ice is a key environmental driver of the life history of Emperor penguins, and that the fifty-percent declines we've seen in Pointe Géologie populations along the Antarctic coast since the 1950s coincide with warmer climate and sea ice decline," said Stephanie Jenouvrier, WHOI biologist and lead author of the study. "But what we haven't known is whether or not dispersal could prevent or even reverse future global populations. Based on this study, we conclude that the prospects look grim at the end of 2100, with a projected global population decline as low as 40 percent and up to 99 percent over three generations. Given this outlook, we argue that the Emperor penguin is deserving of protection under the Endangered Species Act."

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Full circumpolar migration ensures evolutionary unity in the Emperor Penguin

No colony is an island or a remote patch on sea ice on the coast of Antarctica. Emperor Penguins move all around the frozen continent making one single interbreeding population for the whole species. A single circumpolar population! Even though fidelity for the natal site is calling most of the individuals back to mate and rear their chicks in the colony they were born, a constant dispersal every generation is producing the fully admixed genetic pattern found by Cristofari and co-authors and published in prestigious journal Nature Communications this week.

"Our data also suggest that when a colony location is suddenly wiped out by a catastrophic event, as it happened following the calving of the Mertz Glacier, all the individuals have at once to find another good breeding spot" says Dr. Céline Le Bohec, from the CNRS-UniStra and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, senior author in the study and leader of one of the programme of the French Polar Institute Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV). Through an international collaborative work between Norway, Italy, USA, UK, Germany, Austria, France and Monaco, researchers employed a vast genomic dataset to reconstruct the genetic structure of the species and estimate the migration rate among six colonies of Emperor Penguins, some of which separated by 8000 km of coast line. When they leave the natal colony for the first time, juveniles spend two-three years, mostly at sea, before attempting to reproduce.

From direct survey of the colony of Dumont D'Urville (Pointe Géologie, Terre Adélie), we realized that between 15 to 20% of them never come back. Besides some that don't make it, now we know that around 5% of all juveniles find a new colony to join. In some cases, researchers observing a sudden decrease in colony population size often explained it by high mortality linked to harsh environmental conditions during a given year. Massive dispersal can now also be considered as an 0alternative explanation.

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