The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Climate and human stressors on global penguin hotspots: current assessments for future conservation

Climate and human stressors on global penguin hotspots: current assessments for future conservation
Climate and human stressors on global penguin hotspots: current assessments for future conservation

As charismatic and iconic species, penguins can act as “ambassadors” or flagship species to promote the conservation of marine habitats in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, there is a lack of reliable, comprehensive, and systematic analysis aimed at compiling spatially explicit assessments of the multiple impacts that the world's 18 species of penguin are facing. We provide such an assessment by combining the available penguin occurrence information from Global Biodiversity Information Facility (>800,000 occurrences) with three main stressors: climate-driven environmental changes at sea, industrial fisheries, and human disturbances on land. Our analyses provide a quantitative assessment of how these impacts are unevenly distributed spatially within species' distribution ranges. Consequently, contrasting pressures are expected among species, and populations within species. The areas coinciding with the greatest impacts for penguins are the coast of Perú, the Patagonian Shelf, the Benguela upwelling region, and the Australian and New Zealand coasts. When weighting these potential stressors with species-specific vulnerabilities, Humboldt (Spheniscus humboldti), African (Spheniscus demersus), and Chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarcticus) emerge as the species under the most pressure. Our approach explicitly differentiates between climate and human stressors, since the more achievable management of local anthropogenic stressors (e.g., fisheries and land-based threats) may provide a suitable means for facilitating cumulative impacts on penguins, especially where they may remain resilient to global processes such as climate change. Moreover, our study highlights some poorly represented species such as the Northern Rockhopper (Eudyptes moseleyi), Snares (Eudyptes robustus), and Erect-crested penguin (Eudyptes sclateri) that need internationally coordinated efforts for data acquisition and data sharing to understand their spatial distribution properly.

environmental trends, fisheries, global change, human pressures, marine systems, sentinels, Southern Hemisphere, threats
1354-1013
Gimeno, Míriam
cbeb5140-17fc-4d5c-8b8f-339fa771c39e
Giménez, Joan
abfc11e9-9ccb-4343-afa2-943d29544164
Chiaradia, Andre
60978821-58ea-4627-9a73-5d4ea0cf49b1
Davis, Lloyd S.
5a79fd86-69a4-4324-8e6c-58e36cb2e67c
Seddon, Philip J.
4cd751d7-a1da-4231-b7db-ae81e70b0749
Ropert-Coudert, Yan
69540bd6-270e-4088-bc90-e9b578f795f6
Reisinger, Ryan R.
4eaf9440-48e5-41fa-853f-d46457e5444e
Coll, Marta
75e24b5d-de3f-41e3-a96f-cba0adfa6e7e
Ramírez, Francisco
bb84c487-ede7-4232-a505-3753dd144bbb
Gimeno, Míriam
cbeb5140-17fc-4d5c-8b8f-339fa771c39e
Giménez, Joan
abfc11e9-9ccb-4343-afa2-943d29544164
Chiaradia, Andre
60978821-58ea-4627-9a73-5d4ea0cf49b1
Davis, Lloyd S.
5a79fd86-69a4-4324-8e6c-58e36cb2e67c
Seddon, Philip J.
4cd751d7-a1da-4231-b7db-ae81e70b0749
Ropert-Coudert, Yan
69540bd6-270e-4088-bc90-e9b578f795f6
Reisinger, Ryan R.
4eaf9440-48e5-41fa-853f-d46457e5444e
Coll, Marta
75e24b5d-de3f-41e3-a96f-cba0adfa6e7e
Ramírez, Francisco
bb84c487-ede7-4232-a505-3753dd144bbb

Gimeno, Míriam, Giménez, Joan, Chiaradia, Andre, Davis, Lloyd S., Seddon, Philip J., Ropert-Coudert, Yan, Reisinger, Ryan R., Coll, Marta and Ramírez, Francisco (2024) Climate and human stressors on global penguin hotspots: current assessments for future conservation. Global Change Biology, 30 (1), [e17143]. (doi:10.1111/gcb.17143).

Record type: Article

Abstract

As charismatic and iconic species, penguins can act as “ambassadors” or flagship species to promote the conservation of marine habitats in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, there is a lack of reliable, comprehensive, and systematic analysis aimed at compiling spatially explicit assessments of the multiple impacts that the world's 18 species of penguin are facing. We provide such an assessment by combining the available penguin occurrence information from Global Biodiversity Information Facility (>800,000 occurrences) with three main stressors: climate-driven environmental changes at sea, industrial fisheries, and human disturbances on land. Our analyses provide a quantitative assessment of how these impacts are unevenly distributed spatially within species' distribution ranges. Consequently, contrasting pressures are expected among species, and populations within species. The areas coinciding with the greatest impacts for penguins are the coast of Perú, the Patagonian Shelf, the Benguela upwelling region, and the Australian and New Zealand coasts. When weighting these potential stressors with species-specific vulnerabilities, Humboldt (Spheniscus humboldti), African (Spheniscus demersus), and Chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarcticus) emerge as the species under the most pressure. Our approach explicitly differentiates between climate and human stressors, since the more achievable management of local anthropogenic stressors (e.g., fisheries and land-based threats) may provide a suitable means for facilitating cumulative impacts on penguins, especially where they may remain resilient to global processes such as climate change. Moreover, our study highlights some poorly represented species such as the Northern Rockhopper (Eudyptes moseleyi), Snares (Eudyptes robustus), and Erect-crested penguin (Eudyptes sclateri) that need internationally coordinated efforts for data acquisition and data sharing to understand their spatial distribution properly.

Text
Global Change Biology - 2024 - Gimeno - Climate and human stressors on global penguin hotspots Current assessments for - Version of Record
Download (13MB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 14 December 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 18 January 2024
Published date: 18 January 2024
Additional Information: Funding Information: We want to thank Teresa Militão for providing valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of the draft. Thanks to Isabel Afán for helping to perform the analyses and Aina Llorca for drawing the penguins' silhouettes. We also thank all the scientists, students and field assistants from the RAATD project who helped collect data in the field or process them. We also thank the Phillip Island Nature Parks for continuing long‐term support to penguin research. This work acknowledges the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019‐000928‐S, ICM‐CSIC), the project SOSPEN (Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation, 2021, PID2021‐124831OA‐I00), the project SEASentinels (Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation, 2023, CNS2022‐135631), the project ProOceans (Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation, 2020, PID2020‐118097RB‐I00) and the EU project TRIATLAS (Grant Agreement No. 817578) and Ges4Seas (Grant Agreement 101059877). This work hopes to contribute to the IUCN Penguin Specialist Group's mission towards wild penguins in perpetuity. FR and JG were supported by Ramón y Cajal and Juan de la Cierva‐Formación programmes (Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, RYC2020‐030078‐I and FJC2019‐040016‐I), respectively. MG was granted with a JAE Intro SOMdM (JAE‐SOMdM21‐80) and supported by FPI‐SO fellowship (CEX2019‐000928‐S‐20‐1).
Keywords: environmental trends, fisheries, global change, human pressures, marine systems, sentinels, Southern Hemisphere, threats

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 486662
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/486662
ISSN: 1354-1013
PURE UUID: 614a638f-c38b-440b-b4b0-2d415644843b
ORCID for Ryan R. Reisinger: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8933-6875

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 31 Jan 2024 17:32
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 02:11

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Míriam Gimeno
Author: Joan Giménez
Author: Andre Chiaradia
Author: Lloyd S. Davis
Author: Philip J. Seddon
Author: Yan Ropert-Coudert
Author: Marta Coll
Author: Francisco Ramírez

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×