A LARGE-SCALE SURVEY OF ADÉLIE PENGUIN BREEDING DISTRIBUTION IN EAST ANTARCTICA

A recent gap analysis of knowledge of the breeding distribution of the Adélie penguin across the Australian Antarctic Territory in east Antarctica found that approximately half of the species’ potential breeding habitat had no evidence of ever being searched. With such incomplete knowledge of the current breeding distribution, it is not possible to reliably assess possible future change in breeding distribution due to broad-scale environmental change, or to reliably estimate the current size of breeding populations. This paper describes a comprehensive, large-scale survey of the current breeding distribution of Adélie penguins along 3000 km of the east Antarctic coastline. The survey found 44 unreported breeding sites, increasing the number of known breeding sites in the survey region by 42% from 104 to 148.