Acute bottlenecks to the survival of juvenile Pygoscelis penguins occur immediately after fledging.

ABSTRACT: Estimating when and where survival bottlenecks occur in free-ranging marine predators is critical for effective demographic monitoring and spatial planning. This is particularly relevant to juvenile stages of long-lived species for which direct observations of death are typically not possible. We used satellite telemetry data from fledgling Adélie, chinstrap and gentoo penguins near the Antarctic Peninsula to estimate the spatio-temporal scale of a bottleneck after fledging. Fledglings were tracked up to 106 days over distances of up to 2140 km. Cumulative losses of tags increased to 73% within 16 days of deployment, followed by an order-of-magnitude reduction in loss rates thereafter. The timing and location of tag losses were consistent with at-sea observations of penguin carcasses and b

SUBMITTER: Hinke JT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7775978 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature