Penguins Help to Map Antarctica’s Growing Mercury Threat

Penguin helps to grow the threat of mercury Antarctic

By Gayoung Lee Edited Sarah Lewin Frasier

Philip Sontag first visited Antarctica as a doctor. The student brought an unusual reminder: a huge bag of penguin feathers. And now, after a decade study, Sontag and his colleagues have invented how to use feathers like this to create a lifestyle Mercury pollution It increasingly threatens the fauna of the Southern Hemisphere.

Mercury is a common by-product of gold mining, a growing industry in several countries in the south. Toxic metal is accumulated while moving food chain, linking to animal amino acids and then infiltrating the central nervous systems, in which neural growth may inhibit. The monitoring of the mercury exposure is essential to monitor an ecosystem, but sampling rocks, ice or soil is only said for its presence on the food website.

Many predators, including penguins, have evolved ways to dispose of mercury. Chemicals arises in feathers that draw birds in large quantities. Sontag, now a polar researcher based on university of rutgers and his colleagues expected feathers to determine the penguins where they received toxic substances. Scientists were surprised to find a very clear correlation between the feather and carbon isotope between the mercury and carbon isotope; The latter is based on the geographical location and therefore acts as an indicator “where the penguins are fed or in place for growth”, “Sontage says. These findings were published in Science of the whole environmentHe confirmed this connection in the seven species scattered in the Southern Ocean – is a model that is undergoing more mercuries in the north.

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These findings suggest that the penguin could work as a bioindicator of mercury: followers of pollutants, John Reinfelder marine biologist sea biologist. The product itself is measured when it comes to time and space, says, the mercury level of the penguin feather movement continues through the Oceanic food website. For example, the penguin species that lives next to each other had different mercury and carbon-13 levels due to different migration and nutrition models. This data could be modeled on a Maplike database to help guide future projects on conservation and polar science research.

Scientists believe that penguins appear candidates for such bioindiers, Míriam Gimeno Castells Maritime Scientists, PhD. Study of the Spanish Institute of Maritime Sciences at the Spanish National Research Council, who did not participate in the study. Animals are in the middle of the food chain. They breed in colonies, so the researchers can easily extract feathers from different individuals. In addition, they suffer from dramatic molts every breeding season; The feathers they lose will have a mercury that has accumulated in the season without a season, “says Gimeno Castells.

The next steps of Sontag are gathering newer pens, through different species, and measuring mercury in the penalty levels of the penguin and prey to measure the level of substance.

And how are penguins doing with their current mercury levels? “We still don’t think that penguins have been exposed to toxic levels,” says Reinfelder. “Yes, penguins will be fine.”