Female penguins are getting stranded along the South American coast

January 7, 2019, Cell Press

Every year, thousands of Magellanic penguins are stranded along the South American coast—from northern Argentina to southern Brazil—1,000 kilometers away from their breeding ground in northern Patagonia. Now researchers reporting in Current Biology on January 7 have new evidence to explain the observation that the stranded birds are most often female: female penguins venture farther north than males do, where they are apparently more likely to run into trouble.

"Anthropogenic threats have been considered to threaten wintering Magellanic penguins along the coasts of northern Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil; these include water pollution caused by oil development and marine transport as well as fishery-associated hazards, such as bycatch and depletion of prey species," says Takashi Yamamoto of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo. "Our results suggest that the northward spatial expansion likely increases the probability to suffer these risks, and particularly so in females."

Researchers knew that penguins stranded along the South American coast were three times as likely to be females. The question was: why?

While data were lacking, there wasn't any evidence to suggest that males and females split up for the winter. Now, Yamamoto and his colleagues find that in fact they do. The researchers recorded the migratory and diving behavior of 14 Magellanic penguins (eight males and six females) during the non-breeding period in 2017 using LAT 2500 geolocators (Lotek Wireless, Inc.).

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After a bad winter in the ocean, female Magellanic penguins suffer most, study shows

Date:  November 7, 2018

Source:  University of Washington

Every autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, Magellanic penguins leave their coastal nesting sites in South America. For adults, their summer task -- breeding, or at least trying to -- is complete. Newly fledged chicks and adults gradually head out to sea to spend the winter feeding. They won't return to land until spring.

Yet life for these birds when they winter offshore is largely a mystery to the scientists who study Magellanic penguins -- and who advocate for their conservation amid declining population numbers.

"The winter period is something of a black box for us in terms of understanding Magellanic penguins," said Ginger Rebstock, a University of Washington research scientist. "We know the least amount about this part of their year."

But research by Rebstock and P. Dee Boersma, a UW professor of biology and founder of the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, is starting to pry open that black box and discover how Magellanic penguins from one nesting site, Punta Tombo in Argentina, fare during the winter months. In a paper published Aug. 9 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, they report that the Río de la Plata -- which drains South America's second-largest river system after the Amazon -- strongly influences oceanographic conditions in the Magellanic penguins' winter feeding waters. Those oceanographic features, they report, show up in the body conditions of Magellanic penguin females, but not males, when the penguins return to their nesting grounds in spring.

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Five penguins set up home on Felixstowe beach

By The Editor | January 14, 2018

A group of penguins has set up home on Felixstowe beach, the first to ever settle naturally in the UK, it has emerged.

The five Magellanic penguins – all adults and apparently healthy – have been spotted over recent days on the pebbled beach close to the Spa Pavilion.

Experts say the flightless seabirds normally live in South America, and they are curious about how they came to be splashing around on the Suffolk coast.

It is likely they hitched a ride on a container ship from the Falkland Islands to Felixstowe Port, which arrived last week – and liked it so much they decided to stick around.

“From the photographs we have seen, the group seem healthy and happy enough,” said zoologist William Spence, from Cambridge University.

He added: “It’s certainly nice and cold at the moment, so they are quite at home in the conditions, and are likely to be finding plenty to eat in the North Sea.

“However, although we understand the public will want to go and see them, we urge them to keep back and give them some space.

“They should also keep their dogs on a lead.”

Daytripper Lorraine Fisher, 34, who was visiting the coast from Ipswich, said: “We saw them waddling around this morning.

“They’re really cute – much nicer than the seagulls you normally come across.

“My four-year-old son has seen Pingu on television, and he was really excited.”

Mr Spence said that while he and his team were not concerned for the penguins’ welfare at the moment, they would struggle in the heat of a Suffolk summer.

“We will monitor the situation, but it may be they migrate north where they will enjoy the colder climate.”

Penguins do not normally make the news in Suffolk – although three years ago a local boy stole a penguin from a zoo and took it home in his backpack.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In an extraordinary twist, US President Donald Trump Tweeted about this story, claiming it was proof that global warming is a myth.

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The Falklands penguins that would not explode

7 May 2017

The minefields laid in the Falkland Islands were intended to kill or maim British soldiers, but over the last 35 years they have become de facto nature reserves for penguins. For better or worse, however, the time has now come for their home to be demined, reports Matthew Teller.

I'm following a crunching gravel path leading up over a headland.

To one side stretches a sweeping curve of white sand, backed by tussocky dunes, the coarse grass mixed with a low-growing plant bearing tartly sweet red berries that the locals call diddle-dee.

But it's the sound that startles. Overlaying the booming ocean is a comical honking noise coming from thousands of Magellanic penguins. One, guarding its burrow beside the path, stretches its neck up at me, then lets out an ear-splitting, wing-waggling bray of displeasure.

The beach, also dotted with waddling clusters of Gentoo penguins, looks tempting, but between me and the birds stretches a barbed-wire fence marked with signs warning of danger.

This is Yorke Bay, just outside Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands. Once a popular leisure beach, it was here, at 04:30 on the morning of 2 April 1982, that Argentine naval commandos landed, marking the start of a full-scale invasion.

By the time British forces retook Stanley 74 days later, 907 people had lost their lives, most of them Argentine conscripts.

During the occupation, one of the Argentine military's first actions was to lay tens of thousands of land mines across the uncultivated countryside to slow a British counter-attack - especially a seaborne attack via the beaches around Stanley, including Yorke Bay.

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How natural selection acted on one penguin species over the past quarter century

Date: September 24, 2016

Source: University of Washington

Biologists of all stripes attest to evolution, but have debated its details since Darwin's day. Since changes arise and take hold slowly over many generations, it is daunting to track this process in real time for long-lived creatures.

"We know that evolution occurs -- that species change," said Dee Boersma, a University of Washington professor of biology. "But to see this process in long-lived animals you have to look at generations of individuals, track how traits are inherited and detect selection at work."

Boersma studies one particularly intriguing long-lived species, the Magellanic penguins of South America. She has spent 34 years gathering information about their lifespan, reproduction and behavior at Punta Tombo, a stretch of Argentine coast that serves as their largest breeding site. Boersma and her colleagues combed through 28 years' worth of penguin data to search for signs that natural selection -- one of the main drivers of evolution -- may be acting on certain penguin traits. As they report in a paper published Sept. 21 in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, selection is indeed at work at Punta Tombo.

"This is the first decades-long study to measure selection in penguins, and only the second one for birds overall," said lead author Laura Koehn, a graduate student in the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences who worked with Boersma as an undergraduate.

Continued