Feathers as a tool to assess mercury contamination in gentoo penguins: Variations at the individual level

Pedro, Sara; Xavier, Jose C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9621-6660; Tavares, Sílvia; Trathan, Phil N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6673-9930; Ratcliffe, Norman ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3375-2431; Paiva, Vitor H.; Medeiros, Renata; Pereira, Eduarda; Pardal, Miguel A.. 2015 Feathers as a tool to assess mercury contamination in gentoo penguins: Variations at the individual level. PLOS ONE, 10 (9), e0137622. 8, pp. 10.1371/journal.pone.0137622

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Abstract/Summary

Feathers have been widely used to assess mercury contamination in birds as they reflect metal concentrations accumulated between successive moult periods: they are also easy to sample and have minimum impact on the study birds. Moult is considered the major pathway for mercury excretion in seabirds. Penguins are widely believed to undergo a complete, annual moult during which they do not feed. As penguins lose all their feathers, they are expected to have a low individual-variability in feather mercury concentration as all feathers are formed simultaneously from the same somatic reserves. This assumption is central to penguin studies that use feathers to examine the annual or among-individual variation in mercury concentrations in penguins. To test this assumption, we measured the mercury concentrations in 3–5 body feathers of 52 gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) breeding at Bird Island, South Georgia (54°S 38°W). Twenty-five percent of the penguins studied showed substantial within-individual variation in the amount of mercury in their feathers (Coefficient of Variation: 34.7–96.7%). This variation may be caused by differences in moult patterns among individuals within the population leading to different interpretations in the overall population. Further investigation is now needed to fully understand individual variation in penguins’ moult.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1371/journal.pone.0137622
Programmes:	BAS Programmes > BAS Programmes 2015 > Ecosystems
ISSN:	1932-6203
Date made live:	16 Sep 2015 13:16 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/511785

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

10.1371/journal.pone.0137622

Programmes:

BAS Programmes > BAS Programmes 2015 > Ecosystems

ISSN:

1932-6203

Date made live:

16 Sep 2015 13:16 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/511785