Penguin guano feeds algae, speeding Antarctic snowmelt — SkimNews
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- Alia Khan and her team collected red and green snow-algae samples along the coast of the West Antarctic Peninsula, comparing locations with and without penguin colonies.
- Snow algae produce red pigments when nutrients are scarce to protect themselves from the sun and slow growth; abundant nutrients instead trigger proliferation and chlorophyll-rich green growth.
- Penguins track guano across snowfields, inadvertently feeding algae and increasing green blooms that make snow more likely to melt, according to results published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.
- Antarctic melting projections do not yet take the penguin-guano effect into account, despite the study documenting the feedback along the West Antarctic Peninsula.
- Penguins are waddling closer to the south pole as temperatures rise, with potential for the previously unrecognised guano-algal phenomenon to affect a wider area.
Why it matters: Alia Khan’s team compared two algal states, red and green, across the West Antarctic Peninsula. Guano fed green blooms that absorb more solar energy and melt snow faster, a feedback absent from current Antarctic melting projections; the source links penguins moving south to a wider affected area.
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