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the war of the penguins
Homo sapiens, That is what we are. But if we look at it with perspective, ultimately we can say that our species, or its survival, is the result of an interspecific war in which we prevailed over other species of hominins. A war, specifically between homos, whose vanquished, like homo Homo neanderthalensisor the Homo heidelbergensis, we know from the archaeological remains found in different parts of the world.
Maybe that war was not fought with conventional weapons, or maybe it was. But although sticks and stones carved with deadly edges could have been part of the weapons with which those first men hunted and possibly confronted each other, what would ultimately tip the balance towards our species would undoubtedly be the greater capacity to adapt to a changing environment. It may not have been a fratricidal war like the ones we are used to. That war was, as it happens in nature and in evolution, an individual war of each species with nature itself.
It is about the eternal war in which, since the world became a world, the survival of the different species depends on their abilities to combat the cold or the heat, find food, or displace other species in the fight for a resource. As we say, there is no rest, the struggle is waged every day before our eyes, and although we know of past wars that affected our species, today it seems that the turn has come for the penguins, or at least that is what which seems to indicate the discoveries in Antarctica of new penguin colonies previously unknown to science.
Thus, researchers from Stony Brook University in New York from the Antarctic expedition of Greenpeace on board the icebreaker Artic SunriseThey have found colonies of penguins Juanito -Pygoscelis papua– never before recorded on Andersson Island, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, as well as the first recorded finds of these penguins in an uncharted archipelago just off the northern tip of the same peninsula. These are some of the southernmost records of gentoo penguins breeding on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, where until recently the climate was too cold for gentoo penguins, adapted to more temperate environments, to successfully raise chicks.
The Juanito Penguin Expansion
In fact, prior to this discovery only one isolated nest of these penguins had been found so far south. However, what researchers have now come across is a colony of 75 chicks and their parents on Andersson Island.
Scientists found new evidence that Gentoo penguins, a species more abundant in the warmer subantarctic region, they continue to move south as climate change affects the continent.
Gentoo Penguin – Pygoscelis papua
Louisa Casson, campaign manager Protect the Oceans from Greenpeace aboard the Arctic Sunrise, declares that: “this is the climate crisis that is happening right in front of our eyes. In Antarctica, one of the most remote places on Earth, we are seeing a process in which this penguin species is spreading into a new habitat and breeding further south: a biological manifestation of sea ice loss”.
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Climate change, the great danger for penguins
What Heather J. Lynch, Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University and one of the leaders of the expedition, adds that; “In this expedition, we are surveying parts of the Antarctic Peninsula where penguin colonies have been seen from satellites, but have never been explored on foot. Censusing these remote archipelagos will give us a better understanding of how penguins in the region are responding to rapid climate change. Unsurprisingly, we are finding gentoo penguins almost everywhere, evidence that climate change is drastically changing the species mix here on the Antarctic Peninsula.”
“This is a very relevant phenomenon because alteration in the distribution and behavior of species due to global warming is also occurring in other parts of the planet, for example in mammals, reptiles and fish, tells us for his part Roberto Garcia-Roa, researcher at the University of Valencia. The phenomenon can give rise to what is commonly known as dead end, an expression that refers to the impasse to which some species find themselves pushed due to the occupation of the ecological niches that they exploit by species with an evolutionary advantage, as in this case may be the greater tolerance to higher temperatures of the juanito penguins.
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Reference-www.nationalgeographic.com.es
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