Penguin Preferences
Tracking Adelie Penguins with Radio Telemetry

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Background
Ross Island Antarctica is the summer home to many hundreds of thousands of Adelie penguins. The three primary nesting colonies vary greatly in size. Cape Crozier is the largest colony, with over 100,000 nesting pairs. Cape Bird has 50,000 pairs, and the smallest colony, Cape Royds, 4,000 pairs. Each colony's nesting success depends in part, on the ice conditions during the year. In cold years, extensive fast ice may impede or prevent the penguins from reaching the nesting grounds on time. Delayed arrival and egg laying means that chicks may not have time to develop before winter arrives. In warm years, the lack of sea ice can be a problem for the adelies. As students will find in this activity, adelies prefer the ice covered areas over open water. If the penguins must travel extensive distances (several days) energy expenditure may be greater than the energy value of the food obtained. Such conditions bode poorly for the colony's nesting success. Long term changes in the distribution of sea ice in the Antarctic region will have profound effects on the continent's penguin populations. Dramatic declines in Adelie penguin populations have been documented in the northerly Palmer peninsula area. These declines appear to be associated with the decreasd ice and warmer temperatures. Meanwhile, Adelie populations in the Ross Island area are on the increase, as areas that were once frozen in with ice, are now near open sea water.

Resources and Reference Materials
For info and photos on Antarctic marine food web http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/nsf/fguide/

For satellite images of Antarctica http://arcane.ucsd.edu/ Three satellite images are available in the Data section of this activity.

Andre Wille's Antarctic journals tea.rice.edu/wille/1.6.2000.html

Ainley D, Wilson P, Barton K, Ballard G, Nur N, Karl B(1998) Diet and foraging effort of Adelie penguins in relation to pack-ice conditions in the southern Ross Sea. Polar Biology 20:311-319

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