How have penguins adapted to extreme weather in the past, and will this help them adapt to current and future climate change?
In this presentation, Dr. Emslie will provide an overview of penguin ecology in Antarctica with a synopsis of his research and the impacts of climate change that he has witnessed in over 25 years of work there.
Five species of penguins breed in Antarctica but only two are endemic, the Adélie and the Emperor Penguin. Here, Dr. Emslie will explain how these species have adapted to the extreme conditions in Antarctica and how climate change is affecting their future survival. He will also describe the unique fossil record for the Adélie penguin and how it is giving us insight into the responses by this species to climate change in the past, allowing us to predict their responses in the future as we continue to see dramatic changes in our environment.
Dr. Steve Emslie is a marine ornithologist and professor in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology, University of North Carolina Wilmington. He studies not only living seabirds, but also the fossil record of birds and their paleoecology. After completing his Ph.D. in 1987, he spent three years as a biologist for Point Reyes Bird Observatory at the Farallon Islands, California, supervising volunteers and assisting in research on 13 species of seabirds and the northern elephant seal. He first went to Antarctica in 1991 to help with penguin and skua research at King George Island and soon began developing his own research program, especially on the Adélie Penguin. Using a variety of interdisciplinary techniques, Dr. Emslie and his students have been investigating the ecology and diet of these penguins, past and present, and the impact of climate change by sampling well-preserved and often mummified remains from the cold, dry Antarctic environment that range in age from hundreds to thousands of years old. He also has designed and teaches a unique undergraduate course on Antarctica, ‘Antarctic Ecology, Geology, History, and Policy’ (BIO 367) and with Honors students has developed K-12 curricula on polar studies that are available on his website, along with blogs from his previous research trips, at https://itsweb02.uncw.edu/penguins/.