Abstract
Understanding the movements of animals that spend much of their life at sea is difficult but important for effective conservation. Determining the at-sea distributions of Macaroni (Eudyptes chrysolophus) and Royal (Eudyptes schlegeli) Penguins poses particular challenges, including their occurrence in remote locations and difficulties in species identification owing to overlap in morphological characters, particularly in immature birds. Here we use DNA sequencing to examine vagrant Macaroni and Royal Penguins from Antarctica and New Zealand in order to improve understanding of their non-breeding distributions. Our sampling included samples from living birds, museum specimens and scavenged penguin remains recovered from the stomachs of Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) caught north of the Ross Sea. Mitochondrial control region (HVRI) sequences indicated that the two samples from New Zealand were likely Royal Penguins as were the scavenged penguins. Both Macaroni and Royal Penguins were detected at Terre Adélie, Antarctica, despite the nearest breeding colony of Macaroni Penguins being 4000 km away. We provide the first evidence of Royal Penguins reaching the Ross Dependency. All but one of the vagrants were immature birds, supporting suggestions that this age group is the most likely to disperse large distances from the breeding colonies. Our study demonstrates how DNA sequences can assist in identifying taxa with similar or overlapping morphologies, as well as fragmentary bird remains.
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DNA sequences have been submitted to GenBank.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Catherine Tate for assistance with sampling and Jean-Claude Stahl for photography. Murray Thacker, Jenny Boyne, C. Johnson and A. Sealey provided samples. We thank the editor and two reviewers (Robin Christofari and Juliana Vianna) for their helpful comments on the manuscript.
Funding
Funding for the genetic work was provided by the Te Papa research fund. The work in Terre Adélie was supported financially and logistically by the Institut Polaire Français Paul Emile Victor (IPEV, Programme N°109, C. Barbraud) and the Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises.
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AT, CM and LS conceived and designed the research. LS and AT conducted the experiments. YC contributed samples. LS analysed the data and drafted the manuscript. All authors edited, read and approved the manuscript.
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Penguins were cared for in accordance with the guidelines of the ethics committee of IPEV, who approved our fieldwork.
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300_2021_2961_MOESM1_ESM.tif
Supplementary file1 (TIF 49468 KB) Online Resource 1 Photo of NMNZ OR.030897, which was recovered from within an Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) stomach. DNA from the head and each flipper was sequenced separately
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Shepherd, L.D., Miskelly, C.M., Cherel, Y. et al. Genetic identification informs on the distributions of vagrant Royal (Eudyptes schlegeli) and Macaroni (Eudyptes chrysolophus) Penguins. Polar Biol 44, 2299–2306 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-021-02961-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-021-02961-x