Foraging behavior and energy dynamics of Antarctic penguins

在南极海洋，企鹅在南极海洋生态系统中扮演着重要的角色，它们以南极磷虾和其他一些猎物生物为食，尤其是磷虾，它们是南极海洋生态系统的关键物种。近年来的研究表明，全球气候系统通过海冰状况的变化对南极海洋生态系统产生了显著的影响。了解这种变化和影响是如何发生的仍然是不确定的。利用精密的微数据记录仪测量企鹅的分房和觅食行为，研究了这一变化过程。结果表明，当冰况较重时，企鹅潜水的深度和时间增加，表明它们的觅食努力增加。他们在海冰下展示了独特的潜水剖面，这是在无冰地区从未见过的。这表明厚厚的冰层对企鹅来说是一种压力。这项研究还发现了关于游泳行为的有趣结果。企鹅（帝企鹅）潜水时的游泳速度为2米/秒，在上升阶段的最后一刻，在没有任何扑动的情况下，速度提高到3米/秒。这表明它们是通过增加肺部空气量的浮力而浮出水面的。

In the Antarctic Ocean penguins play important role in the Antarctic marine ecosystem by foraging the Antarctic krill and some other prey organisms which are, particularly krill, key species of the ecosystem. In the recent studies, it was revealed that global climate system have significant effect on the Antarctic marine ecosystem through the change of sea ice condition. To understand how such change and effect may occur is still uncertain. We studied the process of change by measuring effort of dividing and foraging behavior of penguins by highly sophisticated micro-data logger system. The result showed that penguins dive deeper and longer when ice condition was heavy inndicating their increase of foraging effort. They showed unique dive profile benarth the sea ice which weree never seen in ice free area. This suggest that heavy ice condition have a kind of stress to the penguins. Interesting results on swim behavior was also found in this study. Swim speed of penguin (king penguin) was 2m/second during dive and increase their speed up to 3m/s at the last moment of ascending phase without paying any fluttering effort. This suggest that they came to surface by increased buoyancy of inflated air volume in their lungs.