Abstract
King penguin colonies present an acoustically rich environment due to the highly vocal nature of these birds and the large abundance of birds within a colony (100.000 + ). Individual identification in adults and chicks is based on vocal signals. Penguins can recognize the call of their partner or chick even among thousands of calling individuals. However, the range of such identification is limited to a few meters, 8.8 m on average in the colony. In spite of the fact that king penguins are famous for their highly developed acoustic abilities, little is known regarding the overall acoustic colony structure. Using a distributed synchronized microphone array, we collected soundscape information over several months at several locations. We find location specific features in the soundscape that are stable over several weeks, regardless of environmental conditions and only require short integration time. We explore if current acoustic indices are able to capture these features, if soundscape stability information might be useful for navigation and if this information can be associated with current colony structure and spatial use.
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