日批在线视频_内射毛片内射国产夫妻_亚洲三级小视频_在线观看亚洲大片短视频_女性向h片资源在线观看_亚洲最大网

WORLD> Global General
Melting sea ice may doom emperor penguins
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-27 12:35

WASHINGTON - The world's largest penguins could be pushed to the brink of extinction by the end of this century due to the melting of Antarctic sea ice caused by global climate change, scientists said on Monday.

Emperor penguins, the species of these aquatic flightless birds featured in the Oscar-winning 2005 documentary "March of the Penguins," breed on Antarctic sea ice and dive from the sea ice to feed on krill, fish and squid.

Researchers led by biologists Stephanie Jenouvrier and Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts used mathematical models to predict how climate warming and the resulting loss of sea ice would affect a big colony of emperor penguins at Terre Adelie, Antarctica.

Their models on average forecast a decline of 87 percent in the colony's population -- from the current 3,000 breeding pairs to 400 breeding pairs by 2100. But some models predicted the colony's population would plummet by at least 95 percent, placing the birds there at risk of extinction.

Terre Adelie is one of roughly 40 colonies of emperor penguins. The researchers viewed the fate of this colony as a possible example of what could happen to the entire species, now estimated at about 200,000 breeding pairs in all.

"Presumably, similar kinds of effects will happen in other colonies and other locations around Antarctica," Caswell said in a telephone interview, although he added that some colonies could be affected less dramatically by climate change.

"This is another example of the way in which climate change affects various factors of the habitat of animals adapted to live in really extreme conditions and puts populations at risk. It's very similar to the situation with the polar bears in the Arctic," Caswell said.

Polar bears, the world's largest bear species, also rely heavily on sea ice, albeit on the opposite end of the planet.

Emperor penguins live in some of the coldest conditions on Earth. They are the largest of the world's penguins, weighing up to about 90 pounds (40 kg) and standing up to about 3.8 feet (1.15 meters) tall. They dive to depths of 1,800 feet (550 meters) and hold their breath for up to 22 minutes.

"I hope people will be sensitized by the effect of climate change on such a charismatic species and realize there are strong ecological consequences of climate change," Jenouvrier, whose findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a telephone interview.

The researchers used climate projections by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and also took into account how emperor penguins were affected by past fluctuations in their sea ice environment.

Since the 1960s, the number of emperor penguins in his colony already has dropped by half, Caswell said.

主站蜘蛛池模板: 欧美在线色图 | 国产精品日韩欧美一区二区三区 | 欧美 日韩 综合 | 中文字幕一区在线观看 | 91九色网站 | 亚洲欧美色图片 | 国产盗摄一区二区三区在线 | 波多野结衣日韩 | 天天操综合 | 亚洲精品久久久久久一区二区 | 久久久久黄色片 | 午夜家庭影院 | 欧美午夜精品一区二区 | 亚洲视频h | 青青草毛片 | 色多多在线 | 手机看片国产精品 | 中文在线观看免费视频 | 成人免费超碰 | 中文字幕偷拍 | 久久机热这里只有精品 | 欧美男人亚洲天堂 | 天海翼av在线 | 欧美国产一区二区 | 日韩欧美在线中文字幕 | 三区在线播放 | 亚日韩在线 | 国产成人亚洲综合a∨婷婷 91亚洲精品在线观看 | 亚洲色图日本 | 不卡av片| 日韩视频免费看 | 婷婷在线综合 | 天天操天天摸天天干 | 日韩欧美综合一区 | 蜜桃传媒一区二区亚洲 | 久久久香蕉 | 好吊色视频一区二区 | 成年人免费黄色 | 五月亚洲综合 | 在线观看亚洲大片短视频 | 牛牛视频在线 |