Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm
Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe
SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 7: Poster
SOE 7.6: Poster
Montag, 7. März 2016, 18:00–20:00, Poster B1
Structural Organization in King Penguin Colonies — •Richard Gerum1, Ben Fabry1, Claus Metzner1, Céline Le Bohec2,3, Francesco Bonadonna4, Anna Nesterova2, and Daniel Zitterbart1,5 — 1University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany — 2CNRS/UdS, Strasbourg, France — 3CSM LIA-647 BioSensib, Monaco — 4CEFE-CNRS, Montpellier, France — 5AWI, Bremerhaven, Germany
King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) that show territorial behaviour during breeding, incubate their single egg on their feet. Thus they can adjust their positions to avoid the proximity of other penguins, while retaining a compact colony structure. A preliminary analysis of aerial imagery reveals that the resulting structure shows a spatial periodicity in density, thus resembling locally the structure of hexagonally arranged crystals. Every penguin keeps its neighbours at least 1.1m away, except couples which have an average distance of 0.45m. Distances and angles to neighbours differ for couples in comparison to solitary penguins, but these differences vanish when couples are treated as a single unit, thus implying that couples don’t disturb the colony structure. Couples tend to cluster, as more couples are found next to other couples than solitary penguins, which could be caused by synchronisation in breeding behaviour of nearby penguins. These results can help to answer questions regarding formation and structure of breeding colonies.