"Warming temperatures are forcing Antarctic penguins to breed earlier and that's a big problem for two of the cute tuxedoed species that face extinction by the end of the century, a study said. With temperatures in the breeding ground increasing 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) from 2012 to 2022, three different penguin species are beginning their reproductive process about two weeks earlier than the decade before, according to a study in Tuesday's Journal of Animal Ecology."
"For some perspective, scientists have studied changes in the life cycle of great tits, a European bird. They found a similar two-week change, but that took 75 years as opposed to just 10 years for these three penguin species, said study co-author Fiona Suttle, another Oxford biologist. Researchers used remote control cameras to photograph penguins breeding in dozens of colonies from 2011 to 2021."
Antarctic breeding grounds warmed by about 5.4°F (3°C) between 2012 and 2022, prompting three brush-tailed penguin species to begin reproduction roughly two weeks earlier. Earlier breeding creates a risk that chick hatching will become out of sync with peak food availability, threatening chick growth and survival. Adelie and chinstrap penguins specialize on krill, intensifying competition for changing resources during critical life stages. Remote cameras monitored dozens of colonies from 2011–2021 and documented this rapid phenological shift, which occurred much faster than comparable shifts in other vertebrates. Accelerating timing changes heighten conservation concerns and extinction risk for vulnerable species.
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