Large marine mammals such as baleen whales play a major role in cycling iron through the marine environment, directly helping to promote phytoplankton growth and atmospheric carbon sequestration.
For the first time, scientists have found that a much smaller animal with a digestive system that’s no less powerful pumps more than a million pounds of iron into the surface waters of the Southern Ocean each year, feeding essential phytoplankton. First time I’ve found that it helps. prosper.
The research team, led by Oleg Belyaev, The Andalusian Institute of Marine Science (ICMAN) estimates the global chinstrap penguin population (Antarctic pygocelis) returns over 574 tons of important metals to the Antarctic Ocean each year via guano, a product of waste accumulation.
This is the first time that the major role of birds in iron cycling has been studied, underpinning the subtle interrelationships of the ecosystem. The researchers found that despite the hard work penguins do to keep the oceans healthy, the penguin population has halved since his 1980s, resulting in half of the nutrients flowing back into the ocean. I believe there is.
Chinstrap penguins occupy remote and rugged areas along the Antarctic Peninsula and islands in the South Atlantic. To measure iron production in birds, researchers mapped colonies with drones and measured the amount of fecal matter in colonies on Deception Island. Further chemical analysis revealed that guano contains high levels of iron, equivalent to approximately 3 mg per gram.
Penguins are famous for producing large amounts of excrement, and the amount can be confirmed from space.
Iron is essential for the South Seas. It provides nutrients to the phytoplankton that many species, including krill, eat. Antarctic krill can form swarms of trillions and are an important part of the chinstrap penguin diet. A significant amount of the guano they produce returns to the ocean, providing a readily available source of iron for their life cycle.
Oleg Belyaev
Iron also plays an important role in carbon capture, as it enhances the ability of abundant photosynthetic phytoplankton to absorb CO into the Southern Ocean.2 from the atmosphere. This ocean may only cover about 6% of the Earth, but it helps regulate global climate and stores captured carbon in deep ocean sinks.
This study also opens the door to further research on the role of other penguin species in this important cycle. Chinstrap penguins are closely related to her two other species of gentoos (P for sure) and Adelie (P. AdeliaChinstraps are of mild concern on the IUCN Species List, but others, which have much smaller populations, are now listed as endangered due to declining numbers. It has been.
At over 30 inches (76 cm) tall and weighing over 11 pounds (5 kg), there are still about 3.42 million chinstrap penguins, but that’s half what they were 40 years ago. This decline is thought to be linked to climate change, which is impacting the distribution and biomass of krill, which is very important. Previous studies have viewed the species as ‘sentinels of the sea’ due to the role birds play as indicators of environmental change.
The researchers hope their work will help raise awareness of the direct ecological impact that penguins have in sustaining life in the waters around their habitat.
A study was published in a journal Nature Communications.
Source: Andalusian Institute of Marine Science, via Simex
