Penguin world depends on perfect timing

A new study finds that male king penguins share parenting responsibilities

By Environmental News Network staff

If awards were given for perfect timing, male king penguins would get the grand prize.

To provide newborn penguin chicks with the vital nutrition that they need to begin life, a male king penguin will store food in his belly for up to three weeks, according to a study published in the Dec. 21 issue of Nature.

"This is presumably an adaptation to the large but highly variable marine resources of the austral ocean," said Yvon Le Maher, lead author of the study. "Our penguin research is aimed to issues that are related to the impact of climatic changes on the localization of marine resources, which (has) important consequences on the breeding success of penguins."

Starvation is a major cause of death for newly hatched penguins. To feed their young, adult birds are forced to forage several hundred miles from their breeding colonies for weeks at a time to consume fat-rich myctophid fish.

King penguins alternate in assuming the task of the hatching of a single egg, Le Maher explained. While one parent is fasting ashore and incubating the egg, the mate is foraging at sea.

Usually, the male king penguin assumes the duty of warming the egg immediately before it hatches.

King penguin eggs require a longer incubation time; more than 50 days are usually required

If the female returns in a timely manner, the hatchling chick will be fed through the food she has stored in her stomach. If she is delayed, the chick may starve.

Enter the male king penguin. If he returns to the egg three weeks before or 10 days after it hatches, he will bring food for his offspring in his stomach. Food can safely be stored inside the male king penguin for up to three weeks, enabling him to feed the newborn chick if the female's return is delayed.

If the male king penguin is delayed in his search for food and he misses that window of time, he will digest the food for his own needs.

"Breeding king penguins evidently have some kind of internal clock that tells them to return from the sea bearing food only if their arrival falls within the hatchling schedule," Le Maher wrote in Nature.

"This work shows that it is important for he penguins feeding cycle to be precise, said Gerald Kooyman, a research professor who specializes in penguin biology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Lately, king penguins have been waddling on thin ice. Global warming and commercial fishing may push their food supply farther and farther away, requiring the birds to forage for longer periods of time, Kooyman explains. If that happens, the young chicks will receive little support from their globetrotting fathers, the study shows.

"Penguins are an indicator species for the health of the entire ocean ecosystem," Kooyman notes.

Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

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