Antarctic penguins have radically shifted their breeding season – seemingly in response to climate change

Changing temperatures may be behind change in behaviour, which experts fear threatens three species’ survival

Penguins in Antarctica have radically shifted their breeding season, apparently as a response to climate change, research has found.

Dramatic shifts in behaviour were revealed by a decade-long study led by Penguin Watch at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, with some penguins’ breeding period moving forward by more than three weeks.

The changes threaten to disrupt penguins’ access to food, increasing concerns for their survival. “We are very concerned because these penguins are advancing their season so much, and penguins are now breeding earlier than in any known records,” said the report’s lead author, Dr Ignacio Juarez Martínez.

“The changes are happening so fast that the penguins could end up breeding at times when their prey is not available yet. This could result in a lack of food for the penguin chicks in the first weeks of their life, which could be fatal. Even if the penguins could match their prey’s behaviour, we can’t expect them to keep this pace up much longer.”