Overview
- The peer-reviewed analysis, published Jan. 20 in the Journal of Animal Ecology, tracks shifts from 2012 to 2022 showing breeding about 10–14 days earlier across three species.
- Gentoo penguins advanced fastest—about 13 days per decade on average and up to 24 days in some colonies—while Adélie and Chinstrap penguins shifted roughly 10 days.
- Temperature records from colony cameras show sites warmed around 3°C (5.4°F) over the decade, roughly four times the Antarctic average.
- Earlier and overlapping breeding increases interspecies competition and risks mismatches with peak krill availability, with researchers noting added pressure from earlier commercial fishing.
- The findings draw on Penguin Watch’s 77 time-lapse cameras at 37 colonies and millions of crowd-annotated images, enabling landscape-scale tracking of penguin behavior.