Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: JEB King penguins dive significantly deeper in the winterEven amongst penguins, there's a pecking order.Emperor penguins are at the pinnacle, capable of dives exceeding 550 m, with smaller king penguins coming in a reasonable second at 343 m.However, Maëlle Oberlin, from the Université de Strasbourg, France, and colleagues explain that many of the recordings that measured king penguin dives were made during the summer, when the aquatic birds embark on relatively brief foraging trips (1-2 weeks) from Possession Island in the Southern Indian Ocean (46°S) while rearing their chicks.But as the sun leaves the sky and the king penguins' favourite morselslantern fishprobably descend deeper in the ocean, the birds leave their chicks in creches and venture as far as the Antarctic pack ice, 1600 km further south, on months-long odysseys in search of food.'King penguins adjust their foraging behaviour during winter', says Oberlin, explaining that scientists had recorded king penguins in the 1990s diving more deeply in winter than during the summer.However, no one had looked in more detail at this apparent seasonal difference, so she, Charles-André Bost (Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, France), Yves Handrich and Manfred Enstipp (Université de Strasbourg) decided to learn more.Inside JEB highlights the key developments in Journal of Experimental Biology.Written by science journalists, each short report gives the inside view of the science in JEB.
Source: Journal of Experimental Biology
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.250506
Author: Kathryn Knight
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409212418