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戏剧性的影响，导致海冰覆盖的大规模变化。尽管如此，对极地物种的长期研究相对较少，以评估这些影响的全部范围。在过去的二十年里，这个团队对南极洲罗斯海的阿德利企鹅进行了全球独特的人口统计学研究，以探索种群变化的几个潜在机制。这个为期五年的项目将使用企鹅携带的传感器来评估阿德利企鹅早期生命阶段的觅食条件以及行为和环境条件。结果将有助于更好地了解人口动态以及人口可能如何应对未来的环境变化。为促进STEM扫盲，教育和公众宣传工作将包括多项活动。将继续使用Penguincam和PenguinScience网站(每月点击量100万次，300个教室/约10,000名学生使用)。每个野外赛季还将有来自企鹅队的Skype直播电话到课堂(大约120个/赛季)。将利用媒体产品和科学期刊论文翻译成5-8年级的识字水平，开展与下一代科学标准相一致的课堂活动。该项目还将培训早期职业科学家、博士后学者、研究生和研究生实习生。最后，该团队将与环境领导计划合作，举办为期两年的罗杰·阿林纳青年保护研究员项目，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：利用罗斯海两个Adélie企鹅群体25年来有标记的个体数据，结合追踪企鹅觅食努力和环境条件的新生物记录标签，研究人员将实现三个主要目标：1)通过确定环境条件、相对猎物可获得性和食物组成如何影响父母的觅食行为、小企鹅的供应和羽翼未丰的群体，评估出生条件的质量；2)确定幼年Adélie企鹅的空间分布和觅食行为，以及出生和羽翼未丰的环境条件对其生存的相对影响；3)确定出生和羽翼未成熟的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被用来提供多条证据，证明企鹅的早期生命条件和企鹅行为与企鹅的能量和种群大小之间的关系。这项研究首次将盐度、温度、光照水平、深度、加速度计、视频记录仪和GPS数据与纵向人口统计信息相结合，提供了前所未有的能力来了解企鹅如何利用环境，并从以前收集的数据中获得新的见解。冰川融化加剧引起的盐度变化对海冰的形成、南大洋的海洋环流和生产力以及潜在的全球温度变化具有重要影响。这项研究中部署的企鹅携带的传感器将支持NSF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？这只是第二项在海上跟踪幼年阿德利企鹅的研究，第一项在罗斯海地区进行的研究，第一项拥有大量样本量的研究，第一项直接评估幼企鹅存活率的研究，结合早期生活因素和环境条件，以更好地了解群体生长轨迹。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.