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ADELIEPENGUINSUCCESS - Long-term foraging success in an Antarctic top-predator, the Adélie Penguin: effect of individual quality, colony size and access to prey

Summary information

Funding:FP6 - Marie Curie Actions
Ec contribution:250231
Start date:2005-12-01
End date:2008-11-30
Duration:36 months
Coordinator:Charles-André Bost (lacalle@cebc.cnrs.fr)
Organisation:National Council for Scientific Research – France
Themes:Biological impacts
Regio:Antarctic
Project name:ADELIEPENGUINSUCCESS - Long-term foraging success in an Antarctic top-predator, the Adélie Penguin: effect of individual quality, colony size and access to prey
Project summary:Abstract
Polar Regions are highly sensitive to climate change and this raises real concern for the future of polar ecosystems. Some of the most important signals of global climate warming have come from Antarctica, the waters surrounding of which support one of Earth's most productive marine ecosystems. As integrators of food web changes, Antarctic marine top predators are reliable indicators of changes in marine food webs. Hence, the Life Time Reproductive Success (LRS) of top predators integrates environmental variability over large spatial and temporal scales, but is also affected by individual and colonial variability.

As part of an international project on the Adélie Penguin, the ADELIEPENGUINSUCCESS study focuses on:
(1) how individual quality is linked to differences in foraging strategies,
(2) the extent to which colony size influences the LRS, and
(3) how high and low quality individuals cope with years of high environmental stress related to changing climate.