Abstract
Interspecific feeding refers to behavior where an adult of one species feeds the young of another species, with the exclusion of brood parasitism. In birds, most of observed cases concern passerines and this behavior has so far never been described among seabirds. We report on interspecific feeding provided by an adult gentoo penguin Pygoscelis papua to an Adélie penguin P. adeliae chick on the Antarctic Peninsula.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Kyle Marquardt, Yun Chang and Noam Sgan-Cohen for providing video recordings and photographs of this observation. Won Young Lee and an anonymous reviewer provided helpful feedback and comments on this manuscript.
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F.G. made the observations in the field, F.G. and C.B. wrote the manuscript.
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Genevois, F., Barbraud, C. An observation of a gentoo penguin Pygoscelis papua feeding an Adélie penguin P. adeliae chick. Polar Biol 44, 217–219 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-020-02779-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-020-02779-z