King Penguins Threatened by Climate Change
12.02.2008 - Other
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that King penguins might be on the path to extinction as a result of global warming.
King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), a species a bit smaller than the Emperor Penguins, live on islands along the fringes of Antarctica, in the southern Indian Ocean. The species is unusual in that it takes a full year for all the birds to complete their breeding cycle. Given the amount of time it takes them to entirely reproduce, these birds are very vulnerable to downturns in seasonal food resources. Their main diet, small fish and squid, depends on krill abundance, which is in turn extremely sensitive to temperature rise.
During a long-term investigation on the penguins' main breeding grounds, investigators found that the slightest warming of the Southern Ocean by the El Nino effect has caused a massive fall in the birds' ability to survive. During the El Nino, penguins that were early breeders did well whereas those that bred later on were badly hit, as food became scarcer due to the progressively warming seas. An increase of just 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) in surface sea temperature translated into a nine-percent decline in an adult bird's chance of survival.
Although the El Nino effect is not tied to global climate change, the IPCC's predictions on mean global temperature rise (temperatures are set to rise by around 0.2 C per decade over the next two decades) suggests that King penguin populations face a risk of heavy extinction.
