Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 01/25/2012 - 19:35
Forums
Greenland Seabird Ecology

Hello My Name is Lydia Côté, I know you write a many article on the Little Auk and I was wondering if you could help me and two of my friends. We are students who graduate high school are part of an international study program and get involved in this program, once in our year completed a project on the topic we want. After some research, we discovered this extraordinary penguin is threatened by global warming and it is believed that it would be nice to inform other students of the impact of global warming on several species such as this example. To do so, we need much more information on this and we were wondering if you could help us. This assistance would be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to meeting you and I wait from you thank you! Lydia Côté
sorry I did the best I could to send you my message since I am French.

Fri, 01/27/2012 - 17:52

Mary Anne Pell…

Hello Lydia,I am glad you are interested in the Little auk. It is not a penguin, although it does look like one. It is a member of the alcid family, which are sea birds, too. I have forwarded your email to the lead scientist on the Greenland Seabird Study, so I hope she will be able to answer your questions.
Best of wishes.
Mary Anne Pella-Donnelly
Science Teacher
Chico Junior High School
--- On Wed, 1/25/12, webmaster@polartrec.com wrote:
> From: webmaster@polartrec.com
> Subject: [PolarTREC] IMPORTANT question on the little penguin for a project
> To: mpelladonnelly@yahoo.com
> Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 8:37 PM
> ((( Reply ABOVE this LINE to POST a
> COMMENT )))
> Greetings Mary Anne Pella-Donnelly,
> Hello My Name is Lydia Côté, I know you write a many
> article on the Little Auk and I was wondering if you could
> help me and two of my friends. We are students who graduate
> high school are part of an international study program and
> get involved in this program, once in our year completed a
> project on the topic we want. After some research, we
> discovered this extraordinary penguin is threatened by
> global warming and it is believed that it would be nice to
> inform other students of the impact of global warming on
> several species such as this example. To do so, we need much
> more information on this and we were wondering if you could
> help us. This assistance would be greatly appreciated.
> Looking forward to meeting you and I wait from you thank
> you!
>
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>                
>                
>                
>                
>                
>    Lydia Côté
>
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>                
>                
>                
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>    sorry I did the best I could to send you
> my message since I am French.
>
>
>
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Sun, 02/12/2012 - 19:16

Anonymous

Hi Lydia, Great to hear you are interested in learning more about the little auk.. they are amazing birds.
Here is a quick summary of the main-findings of our research
1) Little auks eat small zooplankton, and the size (and therefore energy content) of these prey varies with ocean temperature. Larger (better food) zooplankton are found in cold water, and smaller zooplankton are found in warm water.
2) We compared the diet, foraging behaviour and breeding biology of little auks breeding in different colonies in the Greenland Sea. These colonies were surrounded by different oceanographic conditions and therefore had different zooplankton available to little auks. This natural experiment allowed us to gain a better understanding of how little auks will respond to the predicted increase in water temperature in the Arctic
3) We found that Little auks could alter the distances they traveled to collect food, the number and depth of their dive, and the number of times they feed their chick. And, birds in all three colonies were able to successfully reproduce.
4) Although little auks have lots of flexibility in their behavior that buffered (allowed them to reproduce) reproduction, there will be a limit to this flexibility, and we may start to see an inpact on reproduction if ocean warming continues.
This is the super-basic summary. I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have, or send you any reports or papers if you'd like more information.
Look forward to hearing from you,
Best,
Ann Harding