ECOLOGY
King penguin population threatened by Southern Ocean warming
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*Département d'Écologie, Physiologie, et Éthologie, Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (IPHC), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unite Mixte de Recherche 7178, 23 rue Becquerel, 67087 Strasbourg Cedex 02, France;
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biology, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1066 Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway;
Centre de Recherche de la Tour du Valat, Le Sambuc, 13200 Arles, France;
Institute of Marine Research, Flødevigen Marine Research Station, N-4817 His, Norway;
¶Département Milieux et Peuplements Aquatiques, Unité Scientifique du Muséum, 0402/LOCEAN, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), 75231 Paris, France;
||Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive (CEFE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unite Mixte de Recherche 5175, 1919 Route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier Cedex 05, France; and
**Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, National Research Foundation/Department of Science and Technology Centre of Excellence, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
Communicated by Roland Douce, Université de Grenoble, Grenoble, France, December 20, 2007 (received for review October 17, 2007)
Abstract
Seabirds are sensitive indicators of changes in marine ecosystems and might integrate and/or amplify the effects of climate forcing on lower levels in food chains. Current knowledge on the impact of climate changes on penguins is primarily based on Antarctic birds identified by using flipper bands. Although flipper bands have helped to answer many questions about penguin biology, they were shown in some penguin species to have a detrimental effect. Here, we present for a Subantarctic species, king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus), reliable results on the effect of climate on survival and breeding based on unbanded birds but instead marked by subcutaneous electronic tags. We show that warm events negatively affect both breeding success and adult survival of this seabird. However, the observed effect is complex because it affects penguins at several spatio/temporal levels. Breeding reveals an immediate response to forcing during warm phases of El Niño Southern Oscillation affecting food availability close to the colony. Conversely, adult survival decreases with a remote sea-surface temperature forcing (i.e., a 2-year lag warming taking place at the northern boundary of pack ice, their winter foraging place). We suggest that this time lag may be explained by the delay between the recruitment and abundance of their prey, adjusted to the particular 1-year breeding cycle of the king penguin. The derived population dynamic model suggests a 9% decline in adult survival for a 0.26°C warming. Our findings suggest that king penguin populations are at heavy extinction risk under the current global warming predictions.
climate changes | seabirds | time lag | unbanded penguins
Author contributions: C.L.B., M.G.-C., J.-P.G., and Y.L.M. designed research; C.L.B., M.G.-C., J.-P.G., and Y.L.M. performed research; C.L.B., J.M.D., Y.-H.P., and R.P. analyzed data; and C.L.B., J.M.D., M.G.-C., N.C.S., Y.-H.P., D.G., and Y.L.M. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: yvon.lemaho{at}c-strasbourg.fr
© 2008 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
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