Paris. The survival of the emperor penguin could be in serious danger, according to a study that found a “catastrophic” mortality among the chicks of several colonies in Antarctica as a result of early thaw caused by climate change.
Of the five colonies observed in the Bellingshausen Sea region of West Antarctica, all but one suffered a “catastrophic” loss of 100 percent of pups, drowning or freezing to death when the ice gave way. under them.
They were not yet mature enough to face the harsh climatic conditions of the region, the researchers explain in the study published Thursday in the journal Communications: Earth & Environment, from academic publisher Springer Nature.
“This is the first major breeding failure of emperor penguins in multiple colonies at the same time, due to melting sea ice; It’s probably a sign of what lies ahead,” said study lead author Peter Fretwell, a researcher at Britain’s Antarctic Survey Institute.
“We predicted it a while ago, but seeing how it plays out de facto It’s sinister,” he lamented.
During the southern spring of last year, Antarctic sea ice, which is formed by the freezing of salty ocean water, reached record melting rates, before falling in February to its lowest level since satellite measurements began 45 years ago. .
That early thaw came right in the middle of the breeding season for that already complex and fragile species.
These seabirds hatch in winter, starting in June, when temperatures are harsher. The eggs hatch in September, before the arrival of spring, and the young reach their autonomy around January-February.
The population of these penguins also known as Aptenodytes forsteri, it was made up of about 250,000 breeding pairs, all in Antarctica, according to a 2020 study.
The Bellingshausen Sea colonies account for less than 5 percent of that total. “But globally, 30 percent of all colonies were affected by snowmelt last year, so there will be a lot of nestlings that didn’t survive,” Fretwell warns.
Every year, starting in March, the adults embark on a journey of more than 100 kilometers to reach the breeding sites on the ice, which are always the same.
The females lay a single egg and leave it in the care of the male while they search for food, even traveling hundreds of kilometers.
The males keep the eggs warm, balanced on their feet and covered with folds of skin that form a brood pouch. All this, without moving or eating, waiting for the females to return.
Extinction by 2100?
That immutable ritual, portrayed in the French documentary film the march of the penguinssuffers the effects of global warming.
Despite their ability to seek alternative sites to reproduce, melting records since 2016 threaten to exceed their adaptive abilities, scientists believe.
The Emperor penguin was listed as an endangered species by the US Wildlife Protection Authority.
Beyond the danger of their breeding sites, the emperor penguin also suffers from ocean acidification, another effect of global warming, which threatens certain crustaceans on which it feeds.
The British Antarctic Survey institute estimates that, at the current rate of climate change, the entirety of this species could have disappeared by the end of the century.
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