Penguins break records by moving breeding season in warming climate

Penguins in Antarctica are changing their breeding habits at record speed to survive rising temperatures from climate change, a decade-long study has found. 

But the study published Tuesday in the Journal of Animal Ecology, which focused on three species of penguins, suggests different species are adapting at different speeds depending on their traits and vulnerabilities.

Ignacio Martinez, a biologist at the University of Oxford who led the study, said the findings suggest there could be “winners and losers of climate change” in terms of which species can adapt to the warming conditions more than their peers. Martinez’s team studied Gentoo, Adélie and chinstrap penguins. 

The Gentoos, a more temperate species that can eat fish in addition to krill and can live near their nesting grounds year-round, seem to be winning the race to adapt. Their breeding season showed the most change, shifting 13 days earlier on average.

“When we looked at the time series of 10 years one after the other, we realized, oh damn, this is the fastest change in any vertebrate ever,” Martinez said. 

“The change is massive.”

The chinstrap and Adélie penguins, meanwhile, rely on krill for their diet and migrate hundreds to thousands of kilometres throughout the year. They recorded a shift in breeding seasons of 10 days on average.

Martinez’s team used a network of 77 time-lapse cameras to monitor the three penguin species across Antarctica. They studied 37 colonies of penguins scattered across the vast Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding islands.

The painstaking observation was important because it allowed scientists to observe three species of penguins that live close to each other, all facing accelerating global warming that’s up to three times faster than in the rest of the world.

The researchers say that on one hand, it’s remarkable the penguins are adapting so quickly — over the 10 years of their data collection — to a changing climate. 

But on the other hand, the varying rates of adaptation for the different species mean that they may start coming into conflict with each other over land and food.

Martinez said that while it seems the Gentoos have the upper hand, establishing new colonies and growing their numbers while the other two decline, it’s not a good picture overall for the future of penguins.

“If only one [species] survives, then … we will only have one species to survive the next change,” he said.

“If we only have one species, the chances that species survives is very scarce.”