Robot helps science understand climate change impacts on penguins

Thousands of emperor penguins flock to the ice of Atka Bay in Antarctica, most unaware that an intruder lives among them.

Slightly shorter than the average adult emperor, the 1-meter-tall autonomous robot sits quietly within the colony, indistinguishable from the others, according to the humans who sometimes emerge from a nearby research station.

Birds occasionally notice the ECHO, an unmanned, remotely controlled land vehicle, because “they show curiosity about everything they don’t know about,” said Dan Zitterbart, an associate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts.

However, it is a passing fascination for emperors, who quickly move away from the static object. The penguins are unfazed by the robot, which acts as a mobile antenna for an observatory that monitors around 300 of them each year.

At our planet’s South Pole, penguins reign supreme and have no predators on land. But the climate crisis could threaten its existence. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at current rates, leading to warming temperatures and the melting of Antarctic sea ice, 98% of the emperor penguin population could disappear by 2100, according to a study published in the year. published in the journal Global Change Biology.

In the study, the authors suggest that emperor penguins should be listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act.

“Emperor penguins live in a delicate balance with their environment,” study author Stephanie Jenouvrier, a seabird ecologist and associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, said in a statement. “If there is too little sea ice, hatchlings can drown when the sea ice breaks early; if there is too much sea ice, the journeys become very long and arduous, and the hatchlings may starve.”

Pups must shed their down before they develop the waterproof feathers they use for swimming – but if they’re still covered in down when the ice breaks, they’ll sink.

As top predators, emperor penguins are a species of sentinels, meaning they are ideal animals to study in a floating ecosystem as they can reveal if something is wrong. By studying these birds, Zitterbart and his team can learn about the impacts of the climate crisis on Antarctica.

Surprisingly, little is known about these penguins, because Antarctica is not an easy place for scientists to access. While it is crucial to learn more about the penguins and their ecosystem, the team did not want to introduce potentially harmful human presence into an already vulnerable environment, or negatively affect the colony.

A successful test by ECHO this year already shows how this can be possible.

penguins on the move

Since 2017, Zitterbart and other researchers have been tagging 300 penguin chicks a year with a system similar to that of dogs and cats that are microchipped. It is part of the MARE project to measure the health of Antarctica’s marine ecosystems through long-term monitoring of Emperor Penguin populations over the next 30 years.

Capturing the 5-month-old penguin chicks is easy because they are easy to handle and “quite goofy,” said Céline Le Bohec, a researcher at the Scientific Center of Monaco and the Hubert Curien Multidisciplinary Institute at the University of Strasbourg in France.

The research team uses small barriers to protect the other penguins from seeing the process. Adult penguins are totally focused on feeding their chicks when they return from the sea, so luckily, they don’t focus on researchers.

It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to tag each puppy, she said. Using tags or glue to secure the sensor can be harmful, so they use five to seven small strips of special tape to secure the sensor under a puppy’s feathers.

The use of integrated passive transponders and radio frequency identification systems can allow remote monitoring of penguins. But the tiny sensors used by penguins don’t have their own power supply, so they can only be read from about a meter or two away.

That’s where ECHO comes in. The robot works as a receiving station because it is mounted with wireless receivers, automatically retrieving data from the penguins’ sensors.

The robot is a supplement to SPOT, or Single Observatory for the Observation and Tracking of Penguins, deployed in 2013. The observatory is adjacent to the colony and close to Neumayer III Station, the German Antarctic research base. It is equipped with 16 cameras that can capture images of individual penguins, as well as the entire colony, in an area of ​​25 square kilometers.

With ECHO, they don’t miss a chance to collect data when birds return to the colony to feed their young. And they no longer need to use SPOT to look for animals already tagged in a crowd of 20,000 birds, because ECHO automatically detects them.

By tracking and studying the penguin’s behavior over time, researchers can observe how these animals adapt as their environment changes due to climate change. Microchipping the penguins allows the team to determine where the penguins go when they dive into sea ice in the ocean and understand their foraging strategies – the exploration for food resources. This insight can help determine the size of Marine Protected Areas.

During the winter, ECHO can essentially be part of the huge group of penguins that gather as they try to protect themselves. It stays downwind and scans penguins without needing energy to move or turn. In summer, the colony “looses,” Zitterbart said. So the robot needs to move – albeit very slowly so as not to attract the penguins’ attention. The robot has LIDAR, or Light Detection and Range, to detect obstacles while moving with the colony.

lessons learned

ECHO’s first departure this year was billed as “year zero,” said Zitterbart. Now that researchers know the robot is viable and part of a program that has received funding from the US National Science Foundation, they can apply the lessons learned.

The robot has been able to withstand the low temperatures of -4°F (-20°C) in Antarctica so far.

The team learned that the ECHO is not good at tight turns and can get stuck in the snow. The sea ice condition is suitable for driving until mid-December when summer starts and the ice becomes very soft. The researchers are working on ECHO’s algorithms to ensure that when the robot moves, it can figure out how to free itself in the event of a jam.

But the most important thing scientists have learned is that penguins aren’t afraid of the ECHO, or any of the little noises it makes. When ECHO drives, it moves slower than a human walks.

“You have to be really, really careful and we’re trying to do more science with less stress,” Zitterbart said.

Researchers are always concerned about stressing the birds and the colony. In turn, the added stress can influence your results, Le Bohec said.

The research taking place at Atka Bay has become a multidisciplinary effort that has brought together scientists from all walks of life, and “none of us could do it alone,” Zitterbart said.

Zitterbart and his colleagues typically spend six to eight weeks a year in Antarctica. Their favorite time to be there is in April or September, during the Antarctic winter, when there are “a zillion colors in the sky every day”. And with only nine other people at the research station, it’s nice and quiet.

Live indicators of change

If the population of a top predator starts to decline, it suggests that many other species are also decreasing.

“They are an interesting species because they amplify and accumulate all the modifications of an ecosystem,” said Le Bohec.

Long-term monitoring can reveal whether there is any change in where penguins swim while foraging for food, or any other behavior that could indicate a shift in the ecosystem.

For example, the Atka Bay colony now starts their breeding cycle a month later, which means they need sea ice longer. Warmer temperatures can eliminate this sea ice too early in the season, which can force penguins to move to another location that may not support their massive colony.

“Biodiversity in the Southern Ocean is so small, compared to the more temperate regions of the world, that losing any species is devastating,” said Zitterbart.

Watching the thousands of penguins in Atka Bay, Zitterbart is amazed when he considers the fact that they thrive in a hostile ice desert.

“Evolution is able to fill every niche on the planet and ultimately creates an animal capable of surviving in this area,” he said. “This is surprising to me every time I come back.”