Large-scale climate and local weather drive interannual variability in Adélie penguin chick fledging mass

Abstract

MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 513:253-268 (2014) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps10928 Large-scale climate and local weather drive interannual variability in Adélie penguin chick fledging mass Megan A. Cimino1,*, William R. Fraser2, Donna L. Patterson-Fraser2, Vincent S. Saba3, Matthew J. Oliver1 1College of Earth Ocean and Environment, University of Delaware, Lewes, DE 19958, USA 2Polar Oceans Research Group, Sheridan, MT 59749, USA 3Northeast Fisheries Science Center, NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, c/o Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University Forrestal Campus, 201 Forrestal Road, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA *Corresponding author: mcimino@udel.edu ABSTRACT: The fledging mass of penguin chicks can be an indicator of food availability and environmental conditions at a penguin colony. For the period 1989 to 2011, we analyzed predictor variables of environmental and food resource factors acting on multiple spatial scales near Palmer Station, Antarctica, that may influence the interannual variability in Adélie penguin chick fledging mass (CFM). To understand the influence of parental Adélie penguin diet on CFM, we modeled the energy density and krill demographics of penguin diet samples. We found a weak but significant positive relationship between the proportion of immature krill in adult penguin diets and CFM, which may indicate that krill recruitment and prey availability to adults influences CFM. However, the impact of large-scale climate and local weather outweighed the impact of parental diet characteristics on CFM. CFM was negatively associated with a positive Antarctic Oscillation (or Southern Annular Mode) and increased westerly winds and was positively associated with increased air temperature. The mechanistic relationship between climate, local weather, and CFM could include direct and indirect impacts, such as increased thermo-regulative costs for unattended chicks, decreased chick feeding frequency, and smaller meal mass for chicks driven by the geophysical transport of krill by climate and wind events. KEY WORDS: Adélie penguin · Antarctic Oscillation · AAO · Chick fledging mass · Interannual variability Full text in pdf format Supplementary material PreviousNextCite this article as: Cimino MA, Fraser WR, Patterson-Fraser DL, Saba VS, Oliver MJ (2014) Large-scale climate and local weather drive interannual variability in Adélie penguin chick fledging mass. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 513:253-268. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps10928 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 513. Online publication date: October 22, 2014 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2014 Inter-Research.