By Ross Kenneth Urken
Aside from the Arctic, (click here) the Western Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than anywhere else on the planet over the past six decades—some 5 degrees Fahrenheit on average year-round and a whopping 9 degrees F in the austral winter. That's not bad news for every species, though. In Antarctica, Gentoo penguins (click here) are widely considered a climate change winner, as they are more adaptable and can change their food stock of choice and expand their range as the ice melts. But ice floe–reliant Adélie penguins (click here), in contrast, have declined on the Western Antarctic Peninsula.
Ultimately, this tale-of-two-penguins paradigm can tell us a lot about which types of species will be most successful amid climate change, according to Heather J. Lynch, an ecology and evolution professor and penguin researcher at Stony Brook University. Species that have a propensity to make adjustments in their habitat and food intake, she says, such as the Gentoo, can better withstand the challenges climate change presents.
By extension, researchers are using this behavioral divergence as a parable for how human beings can be more successful as climate change wreaks havoc on coastal regions with hurricanes and floods. Lynch says that stubborn human beings with an attitude that reduces to "By golly, we've lived on this sandbar for a hundred years and no stinkin' sea level is going to get us moving" tend to have more in common with the Adélie than the Gentoo....
