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Houstin A, Zitterbart DP, Winterl A, Richter S, Planas-Bielsa V, Chevallier D, Ancel A, Fournier J, Fabry B, Le Bohec C. Biologging of emperor penguins-Attachment techniques and associated deployment performance. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0265849. [PMID: 35925903 PMCID: PMC9352057 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265849] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/17/2021] [Accepted: 03/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
An increasing number of marine animals are equipped with biologgers, to study their physiology, behaviour and ecology, often for conservation purposes. To minimise the impacts of biologgers on the animals’ welfare, the Refinement principle from the Three Rs framework (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) urges to continuously test and evaluate new and updated biologging protocols. Here, we propose alternative and promising techniques for emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) capture and on-site logger deployment that aim to mitigate the potential negative impacts of logger deployment on these birds. We equipped adult emperor penguins for short-term (GPS, Time-Depth Recorder (TDR)) and long-term (i.e. planned for one year) deployments (ARGOS platforms, TDR), as well as juvenile emperor penguins for long-term deployments (ARGOS platforms) in the Weddell Sea area where they had not yet been studied. We describe and qualitatively evaluate our protocols for the attachment of biologgers on-site at the colony, the capture of the animals and the recovery of the devices after deployment. We report unprecedented recaptures of long-term equipped adult emperor penguins (50% of equipped individuals recaptured after 290 days). Our data demonstrate that the traditional technique of long-term attachment by gluing the biologgers directly to the back feathers causes excessive feather breakage and the loss of the devices after a few months. We therefore propose an alternative method of attachment for back-mounted devices. This technique led to successful year-round deployments on 37.5% of the equipped juveniles. Finally, we also disclose the first deployments of leg-bracelet mounted TDRs on emperor penguins. Our findings highlight the importance of monitoring potential impacts of biologger deployments on the animals and the need to continue to improve methods to minimize disturbance and enhance performance and results.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aymeric Houstin
- Département de Biologie Polaire, Centre Scientifique de Monaco, Monaco, Principality of Monaco
- CNRS UMR 7178, IPHC, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
- Department of Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
- * E-mail: (AH); (CLB)
| | - Daniel P. Zitterbart
- Department of Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
- Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Woods Hole, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States of America
- International Research Organization for Advanced Science and Technology (IROAST), Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan
| | - Alexander Winterl
- Department of Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
- Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Woods Hole, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States of America
| | - Sebastian Richter
- Department of Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
- Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Woods Hole, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States of America
| | - Víctor Planas-Bielsa
- Département de Biologie Polaire, Centre Scientifique de Monaco, Monaco, Principality of Monaco
| | | | - André Ancel
- CNRS UMR 7178, IPHC, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
| | - Jérôme Fournier
- CNRS UMR 7204 CESCO, Station de Biologie Marine, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Concarneau, France
- Centre de Recherches sur la Biologie des Populations d’Oiseaux, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France
| | - Ben Fabry
- Department of Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Céline Le Bohec
- Département de Biologie Polaire, Centre Scientifique de Monaco, Monaco, Principality of Monaco
- CNRS UMR 7178, IPHC, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
- * E-mail: (AH); (CLB)
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Thiebault A, Charrier I, Aubin T, Green DB, Pistorius PA. First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins. PeerJ 2019; 7:e8240. [PMID: 31976165 PMCID: PMC6966993 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.8240] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/01/2019] [Accepted: 11/19/2019] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Seabirds are highly vocal on land where acoustic communication plays a crucial role in reproduction. Yet, seabirds spend most of their life at sea. They have developed a number of morphological, physiological and behavioural adaptations to forage in the marine environment. The use of acoustic signals at sea could potentially enhance seabirds’ foraging success, but remains largely unexplored. Penguins emit vocalisations from the sea surface when commuting, a behaviour possibly associated with group formation at sea. Still, they are unique in their exceptional diving abilities and feed entirely underwater. Other air-breathing marine predators that feed under water, like cetaceans, pinnipeds and marine turtles, are known to emit sound underwater, but such behaviour has not yet been described in seabirds. We aimed to assess the potential prevalence and diversity of vocalisations emitted underwater by penguins. We chose three study species from three different genera, and equipped foraging adults with video cameras with built-in microphones. We recorded a total of 203 underwater vocalisation from all three species during 4 h 43 min of underwater footage. Vocalisations were very short in duration (0.06 s on average), with a frequency of maximum amplitude averaging 998 Hz, 1097 Hz and 680 Hz for King, Gentoo and Macaroni penguins, respectively. All vocalisations were emitted during feeding dives and more than 50% of them were directly associated with hunting behaviour, preceeded by an acceleration (by 2.2 s on average) and/or followed by a prey capture attempt (after 0.12 s on average). The function of these vocalisations remain speculative. Although it seems to be related to hunting behaviour, these novel observations warrant further investigation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andréa Thiebault
- DST/NRF Centre of Excellence at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, Department of Zoology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
| | - Isabelle Charrier
- CNRS UMR 9197, Institut des Neurosciences Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Sud, Orsay, France
| | - Thierry Aubin
- CNRS UMR 9197, Institut des Neurosciences Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Sud, Orsay, France
| | - David B Green
- DST/NRF Centre of Excellence at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, Department of Zoology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
| | - Pierre A Pistorius
- DST/NRF Centre of Excellence at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, Department of Zoology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
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Booth JM, Steinfurth A, Fusi M, Cuthbert RJ, McQuaid CD. Foraging plasticity of breeding Northern Rockhopper Penguins, Eudyptes moseleyi, in response to changing energy requirements. Polar Biol 2018. [DOI: 10.1007/s00300-018-2321-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/17/2022]
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Bon C, Della Penna A, d’Ovidio F, Y.P. Arnould J, Poupart T, Bost CA. Influence of oceanographic structures on foraging strategies: Macaroni penguins at Crozet Islands. MOVEMENT ECOLOGY 2015; 3:32. [PMID: 26396739 PMCID: PMC4578264 DOI: 10.1186/s40462-015-0057-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2015] [Accepted: 09/06/2015] [Indexed: 05/26/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND In the open ocean, eddies and associated structures (fronts, filaments) have strong influences on the foraging activities of top-predators through the enhancement and the distribution of marine productivity, zooplankton and fish communities. Investigating how central place foragers, such as penguins, find and use these physical structures is crucial to better understanding their at-sea distribution. In the present study, we compared the travel heading and speed of the world's most abundant penguin, the Macaroni penguin (Eudyptes chrysolophus), with the distribution of surface physical structures (large-scale fronts, eddies and filaments). RESULTS The study was performed during December 2012 in the Crozet Archipelago (46.42° S; 51.86° E), South Indian Ocean. Six males at incubation stage were equipped with GPS loggers to get their trajectories. We used Eulerian and Lagrangian methods to locate large-scale fronts, mesoscale eddies (10-100 km) and part of the sub-mesoscale structures (<10 km, filaments) at the surface of the ocean. By comparing the positions of birds and these structures, we show that Macaroni penguins: i) target the sub Antarctic Front; ii) increase their foraging activity within a highly dynamic area, composed of eddy fields and filamentary structures; and iii) travel in the same direction as the predominant currents. CONCLUSIONS We show that penguins adjust their travel speed and movement during their whole trips in relation with the oceanographic structures visited. At a large scale, we hypothesize that Macaroni penguins target the sub Antarctic Front to find profitable patches of their main prey. At finer scale, Macaroni penguin may adopt a horizontal drifting behavior in strong currents, which could be a way to minimize costs of displacement.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cecile Bon
- />Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, UMR 7372, CNRS - Université de La Rochelle, 79360 Villiers en Bois, France
| | - Alice Della Penna
- />Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Université Paris 06, UMR 7159, LOCEAN-IPSL, F-75005, Paris, France/Université Paris-Diderot/CSIRO-UTAS Quantitative Marine Science Program, IMAS, Private Bag 129, Hobart, TAS 7001 Australia
| | - Francesco d’Ovidio
- />Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Université Paris 06, UMR 7159, LOCEAN-IPSL, F-75005 Paris, France
| | - John Y.P. Arnould
- />School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Engineering and the Built Environment, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC 3125 Australia
| | - Timothée Poupart
- />Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, UMR 7372, CNRS - Université de La Rochelle, 79360 Villiers en Bois, France
| | - Charles-André Bost
- />Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, UMR 7372, CNRS - Université de La Rochelle, 79360 Villiers en Bois, France
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