February 12, 2025
2 Min Read
Penguins help to map the growing hazard of mercury
Molted Penguin Feathers register the food network infiltrates
Gentoo penguins have a large geographical range, which makes them good on top of things tests.
David Merron Photography/Getty Images
When Philip Sontag first visited Antarctica as a student’s doctorate, he brought a rare souvenir: an enormous pingwin feathers bag. And now, after a decade of evaluation, a sontag and his colleagues, invented how to use such feathers to create a full of life map of mercury pollution, which is increasingly threatening wild nature in the southern hemisphere.
Mercury is a typical side product of gold mining, growing industry in several southern countries. Toxic metal accumulates when it moves up the food chain by binding with amino acids in animals, after which infiltrating their central nervous systems, where it might inhibit nervous growth. Tracking the exposure to mercury is crucial for monitoring the ecosystem – but only sampling of rocks, ice or soil in terms of its presence doesn’t say much about how much it actually enters the dietary network.
Many predators, including penguins, have developed ways to get rid of mercury. Chemicals are inbuilt feathers that birds squeeze frequently in large quantities. Sontag, currently a polar researcher based at the University of Rutgers, and his colleagues hoped to use Molted Feathers to determine where the penguins raised the toxic substance. Scientists were surprised after they found a really clear correlation between mercury levels and carbon isotope called coal-13; The latter varies depending on the geographical location, and due to this fact acts as an indicator “a place where penguins feed or where their breeding bases are,” says Sontag. These discoveries, published IN Science of a complete environmentThis was confirmed by a connection in seven species of penguin scattered in the southern ocean-ate, suggesting that they’re exposed to most of the mercury further north, where a comparatively warmer environment leads to higher levels of coal 13.
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These discoveries suggest that penguins can function as mercury bioindicators: live trackers of environmental pollution, says the elderly study writer John Reinfelder, marine biologist at Rutgers. He says that as a substitute of measuring the chemical in the snapshot of time and place itself, measuring the level of mercury of penguin, he follows the movement of the substance through the ocean food network. For example, penguin species, that are known to live close to one another, had different levels of mercury and coal-13 due to their different patterns of migration and nutrition. These data will be modeled in a database -like map to help in conducting future projects regarding protection and polar scientific research.
Scientists consider penguins promising candidates for such bioindicators, says maritime scientist Míriam Gimeno Castells, a doctorate. Student of the Institute of Marine Science from the Spanish National Research Council, which was not involved in the study. The animals are halfway through the food chain. They develop in colonies, so scientists can easily collect feathers from many various people. In addition, every breeding season undergoes dramatic Molts; Obstacled feathers “will contain mercury that accumulated in a flawless season,” says Gimeno Castells.
The next steps of Sontaga is to collect newer feathers to experiment with various species, and measuring mercury in the blood and penguins victims to compare with feathers.
And how do penguins themselves deal with the current level of mercury? “We do not believe that penguins were still exposed to toxic levels,” says Reinfelder. “Yes, penguins will be fine.”
