Download Biodiversity hotspots of penguins around the world: adaptive

ORAL ABSTRACT
Biodiversity hotspots of penguins around the world: adaptive framework for
conservation
Francisco Ramírez1, Isabel Afán2, André Chiaradia3
1
Department of Conservation Biology, Estación Biológica de Doñana(CSIC), Sevilla, Spain, 2Laboratorio de SIG y
Teledetección, Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC), Sevilla, Spain, 3Research Department, Phillip Island Nature Parks,
Victoria, Australia
Climate change is fast affecting penguin ecosystems through changes in water temperature, current
circulation and, ultimately, marine productivity. Penguins, as many other seabirds, are facing new
environmental conditions that may prove suboptimal for most of them all over their range. Today, almost
70 % of the penguin populations are declining in numbers. The other 30% of penguin populations are stable
or increasing. Most of these declines have been happening in the last 30 years.
The challenge for penguin biologists and marine environmental managers alike is to identify priority areas
for penguin biodiversity conservation. Penguin responses to climate change may be species and site
specific. Identifying these areas may only be feasible today through spatial analyses on environmental
impacts. In this work, we combined information on most penguins’ global distribution with environmental
data on long-term oceanographic changes to identify hotspots of penguin biodiversity in the southern
hemisphere that are more prone to environmental distress. We will present data on environmental impacts
at an unprecedented fine spatial resolution that will let to evaluate the specific impacts on penguins from
local to the regional scales.
First we will present a global snapshot with information on marine biodiversity globally with a novel
assessment of the impacts of climate change and industrial fisheries, identifying areas of high marine
biodiversity that are particularly affected by climate and human stressors. We compiled a species-level
database recording the global distribution of over 2000 marine species, comprising of fish, marine
mammals and seabirds in order to identify hotspots of marine biodiversity.
We then identified four main marine hotspots of penguin biodiversity: south of Australia and New Zealand;
south of the Indian Ocean, around the Antarctic Peninsula and around the Argentinean Patagonia. The
main environmental perturbations at these hotspots are changes in sea surface temperature (SST), with
striking changes around the Antarctic Peninsula and the Argentinean Patagonia, where the SST temporal
trend contrasts with the general ocean warming by experiencing local to regional decreases. Marine
productivity (Chlorophyll-a concentration) has also increased dramatically around the Antarctic Peninsula,
which coincides with an area where most penguin populations are stable or increasing. The variations in
ocean circulation are mostly happening in South Australia/New Zealand hotspot, where populations are
mainly decreasing. In this study, we provide a simple and adaptive framework to identify the marine
hotspots of penguin biodiversity and assist the conservation of penguins around the world.
9th International Penguin Congress, Cape Town, South Africa, 5th – 9th September 2016