Pablo Garcia Borboroglu - Penguins: Natural History and Conservation

Penguins

Penguins

NATURAL HISTORY AND CONSERVATION

Edited by

PABLO GARCIA BORBOROGLU

and

P. DEE BOERSMA

A SAMUEL AND ALTHEA STROUM BOOK

Penguins is published with the assistance of a grant from
the Samuel and Althea Stroum Endowed Book Fund,
and supports the work of the Global Penguin Society,
www.globalpenguinsociety.org .

2013 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in Korea
Design by Thomas Eykemans
Composed in Warnock, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
Display type set in Bodoni, designed by Morris Fuller Benton
Headings set in Trade Gothic, designed by Jackson Burke
16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1

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system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA
www.washington.edu/uwpress

The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.

Complete cataloging information for this title
is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-295-99284-6

Many years of work, effort,
and persistence reside in this book,
which we hope will improve the world
for penguins and for people.

(Aptenodytes patagonicus)

(Aptenodytes forsteri)

(Pygoscelis adeliae)

(Pygoscelis antarctica)

(Pygoscelis papua)

(Megadyptes antipodes)

(Eudyptes chrysocome)

(Eudyptes moseleyi)

(Eudyptes sclateri)

(Eudyptes pachyrhynchus)

(Eudyptes robustus)

(Eudyptes chrysolophus) and Royal Penguin (Eudyptes schlegeli)

(Spheniscus demersus)

(Spheniscus magellanicus)

(Spheniscus humboldti)

(Spheniscus mendiculus)

(Eudyptula minor)

The Global Penguin Society (GPS) is an international alliance-building organization that promotes the protection of the worlds penguin species through science, management, and education. As an international forum for conservation, GPS helps NGOs, academic and research institutions, individual projects, local communities, and other partners work together for the conservation of penguins and oceans. Working synergistically, GPS accelerates and enhances penguin and ocean conservation efforts.

Penguins are conservation subjects as well as tools for ocean conservation. The Society fosters the science needed for conservation and adequate management of penguins and marine environments at local, regional, and global scales. GPS uses science to help decision makers improve management and educate local communities about the value of penguins.

The Global Penguin Society links local stakeholders to policy change using penguins. It provides opportunities for the public, scientists, and managers to develop and advocate solutions for sustainable activities and management for marine and coastal environments. When appropriate, GPS campaigns to educate people about how to improve the quality of life for both penguins and people. In brief, the Global Penguin Society encourages synergy, strategy, and integration and provides a unified vision to enhance the scope of penguin conservation achievements.

www.globalpenguinsociety.org

Penguins

Penguins are Southern Hemisphere seabirds. They are athletic, interesting, and ancient. Some Magellanic penguins migrate more than 2,400 miles from the Strait of Magellan in Argentina to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Magellanic penguins can travel more than 170 kilometers in a day, and do so under their own powerno fossil fuel use for them. A breeding Magellanic likely covers 16,000 kilometers a year, the average distance a car is driven in the United States. Emperor penguins breed in Antarctica, where they keep their eggs warm by holding them on their feet while enduring temperatures as cold as 30 to 40C with the wind blowing 40 meters per second. Humans couldnt survive for long in those conditions. If that doesnt take your breath away, imagine fasting in these conditions as a male emperor does for up to four months, without a bite to eat except snow and ice.

Penguins are remarkable creatures. They vary in size from the little penguin, which weighs just about 1 kilogram and is a shallow diver, to the emperor penguin, which weighs up to 40 kilograms and can dive 500 meters and hold its breath for 23 minutes. In comparison, the record dive for a human is 101 meters in 4.13 minutes. Penguin species live in environments ranging from the tropics of the Galpagos Islands to frozen Antarctica and across islands and continents in the Southern Hemisphere. They all are black and white, and some have yellow and orange crests or a bluish coloration. Some individuals in the wild live more than 30 years. They nest in deserts, in forests, on bare rock, in burrows, under bushes, under trees, and in the open.

Fossils suggest that penguins flourished between 10 and 40 million years ago, and the oldest fossil is about 55 million years old. Their origins, however, may be rooted in the Cretaceous period, 140 to 65 million years ago, when their ancestor was a flying seabird. Whether that ancestral form was a loon, an albatross, or a frigate bird is unclear. In this book, we organized the chapters by the relationships among penguins based on current morphological and molecular knowledge. The six genera of living penguins (Aptenodytes, Eudyptes, Eudyptula, Megadyptes, Pygoscelis, and Spheniscus) are clearly defined, and their classification has stood the test of time. The relationship between species within and outside their genera is not so fixed.

We start the book with the largest penguins, the king and emperor (