Climate change is worsening the diets of Antarctic Adélie penguins, according to a new study published in Current Biology.
US researchers used three decades of data from satellite imagery to study the changing colour of the penguins’ faeces.
They found a direct correlation between the poop – signalling the amount of fish in the penguins’ diets – and the volume of sea ice present near their colonies.
The general decline in sea ice in the Southern Ocean during the study period was linked to more krill in the penguins’ diets. This, in turn, was linked to decreased survival prospects for individual chicks and declining colony sizes.
“Satellites enabled us to do something that would otherwise be impossible,” said Dr Casey Youngflesh, an assistant professor at Clemson University, South Carolina, in the US, and the study’s lead author.
