New Zealand penguins may become extinct by 2060
Environmentalists said that the new Zealand yellow-eyed penguins, the rarest representatives of this species may disappear by 2060, if the temperature of the waters of the world ocean will grow at the same rate.
The researchers ‘ findings were published in the journal PeerJ. Yellow-eyed penguins are the direct descendants of the ancient giant penguins with a height of about two meters and their close relatives, who lived in New Zealand and on the coast of South America about 15 million years ago. According to scientists, at the moment there are only about four thousand representatives of this species of penguins and environmentalists suggest that the species may disappear in the near future.
In the study, researchers analyzed data on the number of yellow-eyed penguins over the last 35 years. Using these data, scientists calculated how many adults and Chicks were dying for each year of observations, as many new penguins were born and how long they survive. This information environmentalists have used to create a computer model of the population of all penguins in New Zealand and predict how its population will change in the coming years. The results of these calculations were straightforward — Megadyptes antipodes waiting for the rapid extinction if current levels of mortality of adult penguins and Chicks will remain at a high level.
One of the main “killers” of penguins is global warming and the associated changes in the nature of the movement of the winds, the temperature of the waters of the sea, frequency of precipitation and other weather phenomena. The frequent rains and the weakening of the winds associated with climate change, effectively deprived the penguins of offspring every second year starting from 2003 to the present day. Hardest survival of adult birds was influenced by sea temperatures – as scientists believe, due to the fact that the warming of the oceans deprives the penguins prey. They eat fish lives in cold enough regions of the Pacific ocean, where her source of food, benthic and deep-water bespozvonochnye plankton.
When the ocean warms, plankton, invertebrates and fish are retreating to the South, in the colder part, where the penguins simply can’t swim. In addition, other species of fish that could eat the penguins become considerably less prolific in warm water, which also can affect their survival and probability of reproduction.
In addition, over the past 15 years there have been three episodes of mass death of penguins due to their poisoning by toxins.
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