A Full Lifecycle Approach to Understanding Adelie Penguin Response to Changing Pack Ice Conditions in the Ross Sea.

南大洋罗斯海地区的海冰覆盖范围和持续时间都在增加。这些趋势与经过充分研究的南极半岛西部地区形成对比，那里的海冰正在消失。与后者不同的是，人们对不断扩大的海冰覆盖范围可能如何影响南极区域海洋生态系统知之甚少。该项目旨在更好地了解海冰状况变化对海洋生态系统的一些潜在影响，使用了广泛认可的指示物种- adsamlie企鹅。一项为期四年的努力将建立在先前跨越罗斯岛19个季节的结果的基础上，探索企鹅年度周期中每个部分的成功或失败是如何受到冰况的影响的，以及这些影响如何延续到下一个年度招募周期，特别是企鹅在春天到达时的状况。教育和公众宣传活动将通过“企鹅摄像机”和“企鹅科学”网站（每月点击量超过100万）和“鸟巢检查”（每年有300个教室登录，让学生跟踪企鹅家庭的繁殖活动）继续推广。为了鼓励学生在科学技术工程和数学领域追求教育和职业道路，该项目还将在企鹅杂志上提供该领域的故事，开发符合新一代科学标准的课堂准备活动，增加教学演示文稿的可用性，如幻灯片文件和网络短片。该项目将通过地方、州和国家的演讲活动提供额外的推广活动，内容涉及企鹅、南极科学和气候变化。每年的外联工作旨在通过网站接触1.5万多名学生，通过演讲和讲习班接触300名教师，以及接触500名公众。该项目还将培养4名实习生（本科和研究生水平），2名博士后研究员和1名科学作家/摄影师。该项目将实现三个主要目标，所有这些目标都涉及到企鹅如何适应或应对环境变化。具体而言，该项目旨在确定1)罗斯海地区冬季海冰状况的变化如何影响企鹅的迁徙、行为和生存，并改变对后续繁殖的携带效应（COEs）；2)影响个体多年COEs的外在因素和内在因素之间的相互作用？年代一生;3)局部环境变化如何通过影响筑巢生境、与个体质量和COEs的相互作用影响种群变化。将利用19年的群体数据进行回顾性分析，并收集从新招募的企鹅到可能衰老的企鹅的个体标记、已知年龄和已知历史的额外信息。四年来，将从两个种群（罗伊兹角和克罗泽角）的努力中获得新的信息，使用射频识别标签自动收集有标记的已知历史鸟类的繁殖和觅食努力的数据，以探索企鹅对种群内以及种群之间资源可用性的反应（配偶，筑巢材料，栖息地可用性）。额外的地理位置/时间深度记录仪将用于调查这些鸟类在冬季的旅行和觅食。这些共同的努力可以评估企鹅在一个季节的行为/成功对下一个季节的行为的影响（例如，冬季行为如何影响到达时间和身体状况对随后的繁殖）。在个体层面上，企鹅是否成功地应对罗斯海地区正在发生的海洋栖息地变化。

The Ross Sea region of the Southern Ocean is experiencing growing sea ice cover in both extent and duration. These trends contrast those of the well-studied, western Antarctic Peninsula area, where sea ice has been disappearing. Unlike the latter, little is known about how expanding sea ice coverage might affect the regional Antarctic marine ecosystem. This project aims to better understand some of the potential effects of the changing ice conditions on the marine ecosystem using the widely-recognized indicator species - the Adélie Penguin. A four-year effort will build on previous results spanning 19 seasons at Ross Island to explore how successes or failures in each part of the penguin's annual cycle are effected by ice conditions and how these carry over to the next annual recruitment cycle, especially with respect to the penguin's condition upon arrival in the spring. Education and public outreach activities will continually be promoted through the PenguinCam and PenguinScience websites (sites with greater than 1 million hits a month) and "NestCheck" (a site that is logged-on by 300 classrooms annually that allows students to follow penguin families in their breeding efforts). To encourage students in pursuing educational and career pathways in the Science Technology Engineering and Math fields, the project will also provide stories from the field in a Penguin Journal, develop classroom-ready activities aligned with New Generation Science Standards, increase the availability of instructional presentations as powerpoint files and short webisodes. The project will provide additional outreach activities through local, state and national speaking engagements about penguins, Antarctic science and climate change. The annual outreach efforts are aimed at reaching over 15,000 students through the website, 300 teachers through presentations and workshops, and 500 persons in the general public. The project also will train four interns (undergraduate and graduate level), two post-doctoral researchers, and a science writer/photographer. The project will accomplish three major goals, all of which relate to how Adélie Penguins adapt to, or cope with environmental change. Specifically the project seeks to determine 1) how changing winter sea ice conditions in the Ross Sea region affect penguin migration, behavior and survival and alter the carry-over effects (COEs) to subsequent reproduction; 2) the interplay between extrinsic and intrinsic factors influencing COEs over multiple years of an individual?s lifetime; and 3) how local environmental change may affect population change via impacts to nesting habitat, interacting with individual quality and COEs. Retrospective analyses will be conducted using 19 years of colony based data and collect additional information on individually marked, known-age and known-history penguins, from new recruits to possibly senescent individuals. Four years of new information will be gained from efforts based at two colonies (Cape Royds and Crozier), using radio frequency identification tags to automatically collect data on breeding and foraging effort of marked, known-history birds to explore penguin response to resource availability within the colony as well as between colonies (mates, nesting material, habitat availability). Additional geolocation/time-depth recorders will be used to investigate travels and foraging during winter of these birds. The combined efforts will allow an assessment of the effects of penguin behavior/success in one season on its behavior in the next (e.g. how does winter behavior affect arrival time and body condition on subsequent breeding). It is at the individual level that penguins are responding successfully, or not, to ongoing marine habitat change in the Ross Sea region.