Arctic's 'Penguins of the North' Find Workaround to Climate Change
New study finds that little auks are adjusting their food supply, raising questions of adaptation.
The study, published Monday in the journal Global Change Biology, is the first to examine the feeding habits of little auks as Arctic ice is lost. Scientists watched the birds in Franz-Josef Land, off the northern coast of Russia, during an expedition supported by the National Geographic Society.
Since 2005, the auks' water has become essentially ice-free in summer, reducing the numbers of tiny animals known as zooplankton, a key food source for the auks. Zooplankton normally congregated around sea ice, but now the birds have shifted to eating zooplankton that are stunned—and thus easier to catch—by cold water running off glaciers melting on land. (See photos from the expedition.)
The shift hasn't been entirely seamless. Little auk
