Antarctica is a unique and remote place, and a study of penguins here gives us a valuable insight into how climate change is impacting wildlife. As the Southern Ocean warms due to burning fossil fuels, sea ice in the area has drastically declined, setting off a chain of concerning events for the area’s six species of penguins.
Satellite imagery, camera traps, and AI computing show the extreme impacts the changing environment has had on the population. Adélie and chinstrap penguins in particular are feeling the effects, seeing their populations crumble to levels as low as 80% in some areas.
Given the importance of sea ice, as a sort of first food for the krill these penguins feast on, these catastrophic losses make sense. However, not all Antarctic penguin species have faced such challenges. Gentoo penguins are proving to be much more adaptable to the changing environment.
Exploring recent findings out of Stony Brook University and Oxford Brookes University regarding the increased foraging ranges of gentoo penguins, these birds that move like tiny tuxedos are demonstrating the power of adaptation and flexibility in the face of climate change.
These are illuminated through the extreme growth of gentoo penguin populations, 30,000% increase in some colonies, and the penguin’s willingness to chase new prey or abandon long-held nesting spots in the pursuit of their own, long-term survival.
Heather Lynch, Endowed Chair for Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University, comments on the extraordinary and weird dynamics that have played out due to climate change. “As ecologists, we know that animals shift their range over geologic times, they disappear in one area and colonize new areas…But it’s rare to see those dynamics happening over the course of one’s career.”
Tom Hart, biology lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, further outlines the importance of adaptation when it comes to extreme temperature shifts such as those seen in Antarctica. He brings up the example of how a one degree temperature difference in a temperate climate, such as the United Kingdom or the United States, may not make much of a difference.
However, in the extreme temperatures of the Antarctic, even a minor shift in the realm of one degree means everything; whether the penguins can stand on the frozen water or sink in it, or if their nesting grounds will be snow-covered or not when required.
Gentoo penguins are teaching us an important lesson in flexibility. No matter the hardship, their ability to find alternative ways to survive through their seemingly endless capacity to adapt offers great insight into the power of the human spirit.
The mentioned persons in this article are Heather Lynch and Tom Hart, who are researchers respectively from Stony Brook University and Oxford Brookes University. Both of them have been closely observing the impacts of climate change on the different species of penguins in Antarctica, and their valuable insight has served to better inform us of the importance of adaptability in the face of extreme climate changes.
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