Investigating two consecutive catastrophic breeding seasons in a large king penguin colony.

ABSTRACT: Large-scale breeding failures, such as offspring die-offs, can disproportionately impact wildlife populations that are characterized by a few large colonies. However, breeding monitoring-and thus investigations of such die-offs-is especially challenging in species with long reproductive cycles. We investigate two unresolved dramatic breeding failures that occurred in consecutive years (2009 and 2010) in a large king penguin Aptenodytes patagonicus colony, a long-lived species with a breeding cycle lasting over a year. Here we found that a single period, winter 2009, was likely responsible for the occurrence of breeding anomalies during both breeding seasons, suggesting that adults experienced poor foraging conditions at sea at that time. Following that unfavorable winter, the 2009 breeding

SUBMITTER: Brisson-Curadeau E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10415367 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature