COLLABORATIVE: Population Growth at the Southern Extreme: Effects of Early Life Conditions on Adelie penguin Individuals and Colonies

第1部分：非技术描述极地地区正在经历气候变化的一些最剧烈的影响，导致海冰覆盖的大规模变化。尽管如此，对极地物种进行评估这些影响的全面范围的长期研究相对较少。在过去的二十年里，这个团队对南极洲罗斯海的阿德海企鹅进行了全球独特的人口统计研究，以探索人口变化的几种潜在机制。这个为期五年的项目将使用企鹅携带的传感器来评估阿萨姆利企鹅早期生活阶段的觅食条件、行为和环境条件。结果将有助于更好地了解种群动态以及种群如何应对未来的环境变化。为了促进STEM扫盲，教育和公众宣传工作将包括多种活动。“企鹅摄像机”和“企鹅科学”网站（每月有100万次点击，300个教室/~10,000名学生使用）将继续运营。每个领域的季节也将有“从企鹅”Skype电话到类（~120/赛季）。与下一代科学标准相一致的课堂活动将被开发，媒体产品和科学期刊论文将被翻译为5-8年级的识字水平。该项目还将培养早期职业科学家、博士后学者、研究生和研究生实习生。最后，与环境领导项目合作，该团队将举办为期两年的罗杰·阿林纳·杨保护研究员项目，该项目旨在增加有色人种大学毕业生了解、参与和进入环境保护领域的机会。第二部分：技术描述：利用25年的罗斯海两个ad<s:1>利亚企鹅群落的标记个体数据，结合跟踪企鹅觅食努力和环境条件的新生物学标签，研究人员将实现三个主要目标：1)通过确定环境条件、相对猎物可用性和饮食组成如何影响父母的觅食行为、雏鸟供应和羽化质量来评估出生条件的质量；2)确定了阿萨梅企鹅幼崽的空间分布和觅食行为，以及出生和羽化后环境条件对其生存的相对影响；3)确定出生和羽化后条件在塑造个体生活史特征和群体生长中的作用。来自几种企鹅携带的生物记录设备的数据将用于提供多种证据，说明早期生活条件和企鹅行为与企鹅能量学和种群规模之间的关系。这项研究首次将盐度、温度、光照水平、深度、加速度、视频记录仪和GPS数据与纵向人口统计信息结合起来，为了解企鹅如何利用环境提供了前所未有的能力，并从之前收集的数据中获得了新的见解。冰川融化增加导致的盐度变化对海冰的形成、海洋环流和南大洋的生产力以及潜在的全球温度变化具有重要意义。在这项研究中部署的企鹅携带传感器将支持国家科学基金会极地项目办公室的优先事项：社会如何更有效地观察和测量极地地区？这是第二次在海上跟踪阿德海企鹅幼崽的研究，也是第一次在罗斯海地区进行的研究，也是第一次有大量样本的研究，也是第一次直接评估幼崽存活率的研究，将早期生活因素和环境条件结合起来，以更好地了解群体生长轨迹。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Part 1: Non-technical descriptionPolar regions are experiencing some of the most dramatic effects of climate change resulting in large-scale changes in sea ice cover. Despite this, there are relatively few long-term studies on polar species that evaluate the full scope of these effects. Over the last two decades, this team has conducted globally unique demographic studies of Adélie penguins in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, to explore several potential mechanisms for population change. This five-year project will use penguin-borne sensors to evaluate foraging conditions and behavior and environmental conditions on early life stages of Adélie penguins. Results will help to better understand population dynamics and how populations might respond to future environmental change. To promote STEM literacy, education and public outreach efforts will include multiple activities. The PenguinCam and PenguinScience.com website (impacts of 1 million hits per month and use by 300 classrooms/~10,000 students) will be continued. Each field season will also have ‘Live From the Penguins’ Skype calls to classes (~120/season). Classroom-ready activities that are aligned with Next Generation Science Standards will be developed with media products and science journal papers translated to grade 5-8 literacy level. The project will also train early career scientists, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and post-graduate interns. Finally, in partnership with an Environmental Leadership Program, the team will host 2-year Roger Arliner Young Conservation Fellow, which is a program designed to increase opportunities for recent college graduates of color to learn about, engage with, and enter the environmental conservation sector. Part II: Technical description:Leveraging 25 years of data on marked individuals from two Adélie penguin colonies in the Ross Sea, combined with new biologging tags that track detailed penguin foraging efforts and environmental conditions, researchers will accomplish three major goals: 1) assess the quality of natal conditions by determining how environmental conditions, relative prey availability, and diet composition influence parental foraging behavior, chick provisioning, and fledging mass; 2) determine the spatial distribution and foraging behavior of juvenile Adélie penguins and the relative influence of natal versus post-fledging environmental conditions on their survival; and 3) determine the role of natal and post-fledging conditions in shaping individual life history traits and colony growth. Data from several types of penguin-borne biologging devices will be used to provide multiple lines of evidence for how early-life conditions and penguin behavior relate to penguin energetics and population size. This study is the first to integrate salinity, temperature, light level, depth, accelerometry, video loggers, and GPS data with longitudinal demographic information, providing an unprecedented ability to understand how penguins use the environment and enabling new insights from previously collected data. Changes in salinity due to increased glacial melt have important implications for sea ice formation, ocean circulation and productivity of the Southern Ocean, and potentially global temperature change. The penguin-borne sensors deployed in this study will support the NSF Office of Polar Programs priority: How does society more efficiently observe and measure the polar regions? It represents only the second study to track juvenile Adélie penguins at sea, the first in the Ross Sea region, the first with substantial sample sizes, and the first to assess juvenile survival rates directly, integrating early life factors and environmental conditions to better understand colony growth trajectories.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.