Feet first: Adaptive growth in magellanic penguin chicks.

Growing animals should allocate their limited resources in ways that maximize survival. Seabird chicks must balance the growth of features and fat reserves needed to survive on land with those needed to successfully fledge and survive at sea. We used a large, 34-year dataset to examine energy allocation in Magellanic penguin chicks.

Effects of climate and land-use changes on fish catches across lakes at a global scale.

Globally, our knowledge on lake fisheries is still limited despite their importance to food security and livelihoods. Here we show that fish catches can respond either positively or negatively to climate and land-use changes, by analyzing time-series data (1970-2014) for 31 lakes across five continents. We find that effects of a climate or land-use driver (e.

Sex ratio is variable and increasingly male biased at two colonies of Magellanic Penguins.

Sex ratios are commonly skewed and variable in wild populations, but few studies track temporal trends in this demographic parameter. We examined variation in the operational sex ratio at two protected and declining breeding colonies of Magellanic Penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) in Chubut, Argentina. Penguins from the two colonies, separated by 105 km, migrate north in the non-breeding season and have overlapping distributions at sea.

Social-ecological change in the Omo-Turkana basin: A synthesis of current developments.

This paper synthesizes current knowledge on the impacts of the Gibe III dam and associated large-scale commercial farming in the Omo-Turkana Basin, based on an expert elicitation coupled with a scoping review and the collective knowledge of an multidisciplinary network of researchers with active data-collection programs in the Basin. We use social-ecological systems and political ecology frameworks to assess the impacts of these interventions on hydrology and ecosystem services in the Basin, and cascading effects on livelihoods, patterns of migration, and conflict dynamics for the people of the region. A landscape-scale transformation is occurring in which commodities, rather than staple foods for local consumption, are becoming the main output of the region.

Personality, foraging behavior and specialization: integrating behavioral and food web ecology at the individual level.

Behavioral traits and diet were traditionally thought to be highly plastic within individuals. This view was espoused in the widespread use of optimality models, which broadly predict that individuals can modify behavioral traits and diet across ecological contexts to maximize fitness. Yet, research conducted over the past 15 years supports an alternative view; fundamental behavioral traits (e.

Predicting species' vulnerability in a massively perturbed system: the fishes of Lake Turkana, Kenya.

Lake Turkana is an understudied desert lake shared by Kenya and Ethiopia. This system is at the precipice of large-scale changes in ecological function due to climate change and economic development along its major inflowing river, the Omo River. To anticipate response by the fish community to these changes, we quantified trophic diversity for seven ecological disparate species (Alestes baremose, Hydrocynus forskalli, Labeo horie, Lates niloticus, Oreochromis niloticus, Synodontis schall, and Tilapia zillii) using stable isotopes.