ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
Variability in krill biomass links harvesting and climate warming to penguin population changes in Antarctica.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 83 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
83 citing papers in PubMed.
- Avian cholera causes mass mortality at penguin mega-colonies amid H5N1 HPAI outbreaks in Antarctica.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Record phenological responses to climate change in three sympatric penguin species.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Disparate estimates of intrinsic productivity for Antarctic krill across small spatial scales under a rapidly changing ocean.PloS one · 2026Article
- Genomic analyses reveal trans-generational haul out site fidelity in leopard seals.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Temporary Absence of Warming in the Northern Weddell Sea Validates Expected Responses of Antarctic Seals to Sea Ice Change.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Connecting the dots: Managing species interaction networks to mitigate the impacts of global change.eLife · 2025Review
- Past and future effects of climate on the metapopulation dynamics of a Northeast Atlantic seabird across two centuries.Ecology letters · 2024Article
- Whale recovery and the emerging human-wildlife conflict over Antarctic krill.Nature communications · 2024Review
- Seasonal variation in the stomach microbiota of two sympatrically breedingMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2024Article
- CS-PHOC: weekly census counts of Southern Ocean phocids at Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Identifying prey capture events of a free-ranging marine predator using bio-logger data and deep learning.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Seasonal acoustic presence of marine mammals at the South Orkney Islands, Scotia Sea.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Quantifying Antarctic krill connectivity across the West Antarctic Peninsula and its role in large-scale Pygoscelis penguin population dynamics.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Contrasting environmental conditions precluded lower availability of Antarctic krill affecting breeding chinstrap penguins in the Antarctic Peninsula.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Adélie penguins north and east of the 'Adélie gap' continue to thrive in the face of dramatic declines elsewhere in the Antarctic Peninsula region.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Juvenile emperor penguin range calls for extended conservation measures in the Southern Ocean.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Demographic Reconstruction of Antarctic Fur Seals Supports the Krill Surplus Hypothesis.Genes · 2022Article
- Intra-season variations in distribution and abundance of humpback whales in the West Antarctic Peninsula using cruise vessels as opportunistic platforms.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Societal importance of Antarctic negative feedbacks on climate change: blue carbon gains from sea ice, ice shelf and glacier losses.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2021Review
23 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) and adjacent Scotia Sea support abundant wildlife populations, many of which were nearly extirpated by humans. This region is also among the fastest-warming areas on the planet, with 5-6 °C increases in mean winter air temperatures and associated decreases in winter sea-ice cover. These biological and physical perturbations have affected the ecosystem profoundly. One hypothesis guiding ecological interpretations of changes in top predator populations in this region, the "sea-ice hypothesis," proposes that reductions in winter sea ice have led directly to declines in "ice-loving" species by decreasing their winter habitat, while populations of "ice-avoiding" species have increased. However, 30 y of field studies and recent surveys of penguins throughout the WAP and Scotia Sea demonstrate this mechanism is not controlling penguin populations; populations of both ice-loving Adélie and ice-avoiding chinstrap penguins have declined significantly. We argue in favor of an alternative, more robust hypothesis that attributes both increases and decreases in penguin populations to changes in the abundance of their main prey, Antarctic krill. Unlike many other predators in this region, Adélie and chinstrap penguins were never directly harvested by man; thus, their population trajectories track the impacts of biological and environmental changes in this ecosystem. Linking trends in penguin abundance with trends in krill biomass explains why populations of Adélie and chinstrap penguins increased after competitors (fur seals, baleen whales, and some fishes) were nearly extirpated in the 19th to mid-20th centuries and currently are decreasing in response to climate change.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.