David Ainley

• HT Harvey & Associates

Most of the Ross Sea has been designated a marine protected area (MPA), proposed 'to protect ecosystem structure and function'. To assess effectiveness, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) selected Adélie (Pygoscelis adeliae) and emperor (Aptenodytes forsteri) penguins, Weddell seals (Leptonychotes wedd...

The Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddellii) is a fast-ice obligate species that plays an important role as both predator and prey within the high-latitude, coastal Southern Ocean. Weddell seals are affected by pressures of marine resource extraction and variation in sea-ice extent and characteristics that are affected by climate. Thus, monitoring th...

Like many polar animals, emperor penguin populations are challenging to monitor because of the species' life history and remoteness. Consequently, it has been difficult to establish its global status, a subject important to resolve as polar environments change. To advance our understanding of emperor penguins, we combined remote sensing, validation...

Chen et al. (Polar Biology, 43(11):1769–1781) recently reported lagged, region-specific responses of Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) abundance to environmental variability in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Their study suggests that lags are important toward understanding Adélie penguin population change. Though we agree with many of their findings,...

The Weddell seal is one of the best-studied marine mammals in the world, owing to a multidecadal demographic effort in the southernmost part of its range. Despite their occurrence around the Antarctic coastline, we know little about larger scale patterns in distribution, population size, or structure. We combined high-resolution satellite imagery f...

Mixed-species colonies occur frequently, especially among seabirds, and may provide mutual benefits among associated species including antipredator advantages. The "protector" species in such associations may provide early warning signals or by aggressively defending their own nests, may expel predators from the area. We explored costs and benefits...

Penguins face a wide range of threats. Most observed population changes have been negative and have happened over the last 60 years. Today, populations of 11 penguin species are decreasing. Here we present a review that synthesizes details of threats faced by the world’s 18 species of penguins. We discuss alterations to their environment at both br...

Adélie penguins are renowned for their natal philopatry on land-based colonies, requiring small pebbles to be used for nests. We report on an opportunistic observation via aerial survey, where hundreds of Adélie penguins were documented displaying nesting behaviours on fast ice ~3 km off the coast of Cape Crozier, which is one of the largest coloni...

Age variation in reproductive performance is well-documented but the mechanisms underlying this variation remain unclear. Foraging efficiency is likely to be a key source of demographic variation as it determines the amount of energy that can be invested in fitness-related activities. Evidence of age-related changes in the foraging efficiency of ad...

We examined the relationship between Chinook salmon adult weight in the Gulf of the Farallones and the Oceanic El Nino index. We found a significant negative relationship between adult Chinook weight and the index, with El Nino year salmon weighing 31% less. We also found also found a positive relationship between adult Chinook weight and an index...

The Brandt's Cormorant of the California Current is a "boom-or-bust" species like its congeners in other eastern boundary, upwelling driven ecosystems, and like many of the prey upon which they depend. These birds produce many recruits when fish availability is high, leading to rapidly increasing populations, but few recruits, and may even exhibit...

The family Papillomaviridae contains more than 320 papillomavirus types, with most having been identified as infecting skin and mucosal epithelium in mammalian hosts. To date, only nine non-mammalian papillomaviruses have been described from birds (n = 5), a fish (n = 1), a snake (n = 1), and turtles (n = 2). The identification of papillomaviruses...

Owing to commercial fishing during the late 1970s/early 1980s, targeted notothenioid species had become depleted around the South Shetland Islands. Herein we report subsequent changes in the prevalence of three species, Notothenia rossii, Gobionotothen gibberifrons and Notothenia coriiceps in Potter Cove, King George Islands/Isla 25 de Mayo, in a 3...

The Antarctic, sub-Antarctic islands and surrounding sea-ice provide a unique environment for the existence of organisms. Nonetheless, birds and seals of a variety of species inhabit them, particularly during their breeding seasons. Early research on Antarctic wildlife health, using serology-based assays, showed exposure to viruses in the families...

The Ross Sea pelagic food web is closely coupled, with the foraging among abundant upper level species affecting the foraging of one another. To investigate the roles cetaceans may have in such interspecific interactions in this system, we studied within-season and interannual occurrence patterns of Antarctic minke whales (Balaenoptera bonaerensis)...

The viruses circulating among Antarctic wildlife remain largely unknown. In an effort to identify viruses associated with Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) inhabiting the Ross Sea, vaginal and nasal swabs, and faecal samples were collected between November 2014 and February 2015. In addition, a Weddell seal kidney and South Polar skua (Sterco...

We herein review the modeling approach of Pinkerton et al. (2016, Ecol. Modelling), who tested the hypothesis that fishery depletion of large, neutrally buoyant Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) was implicated in the recent increase in the southern Ross Sea population of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae). Toothfish are a trophic competi...

In the Ross Sea region, most South Polar Skuas (Stercorarius maccormicki) nest near Adélie Penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) colonies, preying and scavenging on fish, penguins, and other carrion. To derive a relationship to predict skua numbers from better-quantified penguin numbers, we used distance sampling to estimate breeding skua numbers within 100...

Evidence of climate change-driven shifts in plant and animal phenology have raised concerns that certain trophic interactions may be increasingly mismatched in time, resulting in declines in reproductive success. Given the constraints imposed by extreme seasonality at high latitudes and the rapid shifts in phenology seen in the Arctic, we would als...

World fishery take peaked during the 1980s and has since declined as stocks have become fully or over exploited, forcing fishermen into ever deeper and more remote waters. Antarctic fishing has reflected this global trend. In 1996 a single, exploratory long-line vessel from New Zealand penetrated the icy waters of the Ross Sea, and in doing so, ini...

Seabirds occurring south of the Antarctic Polar Front are composed of three groups: ice-obligate, ice-tolerant and ice-avoiding species. The ice-obligate species are, with rare exception, associated with sea ice, year round, or at least waters previously ice-covered during winter; if sea ice fails to form, as is increasingly the case in the Antarct...

We comment on the conjecture by Parker et al . (2016) that Antarctic toothfish recently returned to McMurdo Sound, arguing that this species never departed. Instead, as deduced from a 40-year fishing effort, toothfish water column prevalence became markedly reduced where bottom depths are <500 m, with research continuing to show their presence on t...

The Antarctic provides vital ecosystem services and contains the world’s healthiest marine ecosystems, but faces increasing impacts from climate change and fishing. The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), lauded as a leader in international fisheries management, is committed to adopting marine protected ar...

Trammel net surveys were continued in Potter Cove, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, to achieve a 33-year record, 1983-2016, to monitor changes in the prevalence of three species of notothenioid fishes: Notothenia rossii, Gobionotothen gibberifrons and N. coriiceps. Inshore results were consistent with those achieved from the most recent offshore...

Extraction of Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) in the Ross Sea began in 1997, following a management plan that targets the largest fish with a goal of reducing the spawning biomass by 50% over 35 years. We investigate the potential long-term consequences of the reduced availability of this prey for Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii)....

We expand the paper by Hanchet et al. (Hydrobiologia 761:397–414, 2015), published in Hydrobiologia, by elaborating upon neutral buoyancy, a critical aspect of Antarctic toothfish life history that was only briefly treated by those authors. Neutral buoyancy, although not common among adult notothenioid fish, is an attribute that expands the water c...

We review the precautionary approach to fisheries management, propose a framework that will allow a systematic assessment of insufficient precaution and provide an illustration using an Antarctic fishery. For a single-species fishery, our framework includes five attributes: (1) limit reference points that recognize gaps in our understanding of the...

Sexually size-dimorphic species must show some difference between the sexes in growth rate and/or length of growing period. Such differences in growth parameters can cause the sexes to be impacted by environmental variability in different ways, and understanding these differences allows a better understanding of patterns in productivity between ind...

The Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CAMLR Convention) is the legal doctrine presiding over the exploitation of marine life in the Southern Ocean. At recent Commission (CCAMLR) meetings, some member states have interpreted the term 'rational use' in the Convention text as 'the unrestricted right to fish' and, mo...

In February 2015, a special paper session about the range-wide conservation and science of the Ashy Storm-Petrel Oceanodroma homochroa (ASSP) was held at the Pacific Seabird Group annual meeting. The main goal was to share information amassed during the past 20 years on this species, which breeds almost entirely in California, United States, for fo...

We investigated mesopredator effects on prey availability in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, as - sessing the reasons why Adélie penguin Pygoscelis adeliae foraging trip duration (FTD) increases and diet changes from krill to fish as numbers of foraging penguins and competing cetaceans increase in the penguins' foraging area. To investigate penguins' sea...

Ground counts during 1959–1968 compared with counts using high resolution (0.6 m2) satellite imagery during 2008–2012 indicated many fewer Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) at two major molting areas in the western Ross Sea: Edisto Inlet-Moubray Bay, northern Victoria Land, and McMurdo Sound, southern Victoria Land. Breeding seals have largel...

Little is known about viruses associated with Antarctic animals, though they are likely widespread. We recovered a novel polyomavirus from Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) faecal matter sampled in a sub-colony at Cape Royds, Ross Island, Antarctica. The 4988 nt Adélie penguin polyomavirus (AdPyV) has a typical polyomavirus genome organisation wi...

Body size, mass and condition can affect an organism’s ability to cope with variation in resource availability or metabolic demand, particularly as juveniles become independent of their parents. It follows that changes to parental provisioning efficiency (size and frequency of meals delivered) through intraspecific competition or environmental cond...

The ocean is swept by winds in regionally and seasonally predictable ways, and seabirds have been exploiting these patterns for millennia. Seabird use of wind energy is an under-appreciated aspect of seabird ecology. Using data from 114 cruises spanning the Southern Ocean, Peru Current, California Current and Equatorial Pacific from 1976 to 2006, w...

We investigated central place foraging (CPF) in the context of optimal foraging theory in Adélie penguins Pygoscelis adeliae of the southern Ross Sea by using satellite tracking and time-depth recorders to explore foraging at two spatio-temporal scales: within the day-to-day (sub-mesoscale: single foraging trip, 10s of km2) and the entire breeding...

We investigated life history responses to extreme variation in physical environmental conditions during a long-term demographic study of Adélie penguins at 3 colonies representing 9% of the world population and the full range of breeding colony sizes. Five years into the 14-year study (1997–2010) two very large icebergs (spanning 1.5 latitude degre...

On Jan 12, 2015 this sequence version replaced gi:742287912. ##Assembly-Data-START## Assembly Method :: DNAbaser v. 4 Sequencing Technology :: Sanger dideoxy sequencing ##Assembly-Data-END##

Four broad categories of human activities that presently threaten Antarctic wildlife in the Antarctic were identified: (1) tourism and non-governmental activities, (2) scientific research, (3) commercial fisheries and (4) whaling. Two further broad categories of threats that originate from multiple forms of human activities are: (1) shipping-relate...

Research on the ecology of top predators – upper trophic level consumers that are relatively free from predation once they reach adult size – has provided regular contributions to general ecology and is a rapidly expanding and increasingly experimental, multidisciplinary and technological endeavour. Yet, an exponentially expanding literature couple...

Papillomaviruses are epitheliotropic viruses that have circular double stranded DNA genomes encapsidated in non-enveloped virions. They have been found to infect a variety of mammals, reptiles and birds but they have so far not been found in amphibians. Using a Next-Gen de novo assembly contig-informed recovery, we cloned and Sanger-sequenced the c...

Measurements of the size of Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) colonies of the southern Ross Sea are among the longest biologic time series in the Antarctic. We present an assessment of recent annual variation and trends in abundance and growth rates of these colonies, adding to the published record not updated for more than two decades. High angl...

IN THE CONTEXT OF PREDICTED ALTERATION OF SEA ICE COVER AND INCREASED FREQUENCY OF EXTREME EVENTS, IT IS ESPECIALLY TIMELY TO INVESTIGATE PLASTICITY WITHIN ANTARCTIC SPECIES RESPONDING TO A KEY ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECT OF THEIR ECOLOGY: sea ice variability. Using 13 years of longitudinal data, we investigated the effect of sea ice concentration (SIC) o...

Ade´lie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) are important predators of krill (Euphausia spp.) and Antarctic silverfish (Pleuragramma antarctica) during summer, are a key indicator of the status of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, and are therefore a focal species for the Committee for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) Ecosystem...

##Assembly-Data-START## Assembly Method :: DNAbaser v. 4 Sequencing Technology :: Sanger dideoxy sequencing ##Assembly-Data-END##

Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) are important predators of krill (Euphausia spp.) and Antarctic silverfish (Pleuragramma antarctica) during summer, are a key indicator of the status of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, and are therefore a focal species for the Committee for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) Ecosystem M...

Top predators are useful ecological indicators of changes in marine prey stocks and other ecosystem drivers. In the Ross Sea region, most south polar skuas (Catharacta maccormicki) nest near Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) colonies, feeding on fish, penguin eggs and chicks, and carrion. We estimated skua abundance at Adélie penguin colonies on...

Similarly structured food web models of four coastal ecosystems (Northern California Current, Central Gulf of Alaska, Georges Bank, southwestern Antarctic Peninsula) were used to investigate competition among whales, fishes, pinnipeds, and humans. Two analysis strategies simulated the effects of historic baleen and odontocete whale abundances acros...

The continental shelf of the Ross Sea exhibits substantial variations in physical forcing, ice cover, and biological processes on a variety of time and space scales. Its circulation is characterized by advective inputs from the east and exchanges with off-shelf regions via the troughs along the northern portions. Phytoplankton biomass is greater th...

Harvesting impacts on Antarctic marine ecosystems: changes in food web structure and loss of ecosystem value Ecosystems are composed of the physical environment and the species that live in them (the abiotic and biotic components of an ecosystem, respectively). Today there is great concern for the effects of climate change (change in the abiotic c...

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was created as a conservation tool – intended to provide “the best environmental choice in seafood” to consumers and to create positive incentives that would improve the status and management of fisheries. During its 15 years, the MSC, which has an annual budget of close to US$20 million, has attached its logo t...

There will be winners and losers as climate change alters the habitats of polar organisms. For an Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) colony on Beaufort Island (Beaufort), part of a cluster of colonies in the southern Ross Sea, we report a recent population increase in response to increased nesting habitat as glaciers have receded. Emigration rates...

The Automated Meteorology–Ice/Indigenous species–Geophysics Observation System (AMIGOS) consists of a set of measurement instruments and camera(s) controlled by a single-board computer with a simplified Linux operating system and an Iridium satellite modem supporting two-way communication. Primary features of the system relevant to polar operations...

Understanding the relative effects of biotic and abiotic drivers of survival, and the interactions between them, is a key component in understanding the factors driving changes in animal populations. Body size, mass and condition may be important determinants of an organism’s ability to survive periods of low resource availiability or high metaboli...

The history of biotic exploitation for the continental margin (shelf and slope) of the Antarctic Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) is reviewed, with emphasis on the period from 1970 to 2010. In the Antarctic Peninsula portion, marine mammals were decimated by the 1970s and groundfish by the early 1980s. Fishing for Antarctic krill Euphausia superba bega...

A previously unpublished four-page pamphlet by Dr. George Murray Levick R.N. (1876–1956) on the ‘Sexual habits of the Adélie penguin’ was recently rediscovered at the Natural History Museum (NHM) at Tring. It was printed in 1915 but declined for publication with the official expedition reports. The account, based upon Levick's detailed field observ...

The Ross Sea, the most productive region in the Antarctic, reaches farther south than any body of water in the world. While its food web is relatively intact, its oceanography, biogeochemistry, and sea ice coverage have been changing dramatically, and likely will continue to do so in the future. Sea ice cover and persistence have been increasing, i...

Commercial fishing of finfish in the Antarctic began in the 1960s just as decades of sealing and whaling were ending. Around the South Shetland Islands, where our study was focused, heavy fishing was reported mainly from its northern-most island, Elephant Island, during 1977-1980. N. rossii and Champsocephalus gunnari were the target species, but a...

Foraging events and related trends in numbers of Type-B and -C killer whales (Orcinus orca) are reported for the vicinity of Ross Island, Ross Sea, Antarctica between 2002 and 2010. Updating an earlier report, the frequency of sightings and the number of individuals per sighting of Ross Sea killer whales (Type-C; RSKWs), a fishing-eating ecotype, h...

Seabirds are facing a growing number of threats in both terrestrial and marine habitats, and many populations have experienced dramatic changes over past decades. Years of seabird research have improved our understanding of seabird populations and provided a broader understanding of marine ecological processes. In an effort to encourage future rese...

We review the history of how research directed towards marine ornithology has led to an appreciation of seabirds as highly specialized marine organisms. Beginning with R. C. Murphy (Pacific), V. C. Wynne-Edwards (Atlantic), and associates in the early 1900s, the research approach grew from an emphasis on seabird single-species ecology to an appreci...

We report the analyses of a dataset spanning 39 years of near-annual fishing for Dissostichus mawsoni in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, 1972–2011. Data on total length, condition and catch per unit effort (CPUE) were derived from the > 5500 fish caught, the large majority of which were measured, tagged and released. Con-trary to expectation, the length...

IntroductionPhysical settingBiological settingFood web and biotic interactionsConclusions AcknowledgementsReferences

The population size of Antarctic minke whales Balaenoptera bonaerensis has been changing simultaneously with profound changes in the physics, i.e., mesopredator habitat features, of the Southern Ocean. Although the two trends may not be related, distinguishing among the factors responsible requires a better understanding of minke whale habitat pref...

Springer 2012 3.1 Fishing Further and Deeper Historically, fishermen targeted fish in shallow, nearshore waters relatively close to port (Pauly et al. 2005). As these species became depleted, to meet growing demands, fishermen were forced to move offshore and into deeper waters (Hutchings and Reynolds 2004; Koslow et al. 2000; Morato et al. 2006; H...

With parts of Antarctica warming at seven times the rate of the rest of the globe, climate change stands to significantly affect terrestrial and aquatic species and ecosystems. Disappearing sea ice, declines in Antarctic krill stocks, and expanding plant communities over the last several decades portend even more notable changes in the future. Whil...

a b s t r a c t Designation of an effective marine protected area (MPA) requires substantial knowledge of the spatial use of the region by key species, particularly those of high mobility. Within the Ross Sea, Antarctica, the least altered marine ecosystem on Earth, unusually large and closely interacting populations of several marine bird and mamm...

The Weddell seal population in Erebus Bay, Antarctica, represents one of the best-studied marine mammal populations in the world, providing an ideal test for the efficacy of satellite imagery to inform about seal abundance and population trends. Using high-resolution (0.6m) satellite imagery, we compared counts from imagery to ground counts of adul...

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Marine protected areas (MPAs) provide an important tool for conservation of marine ecosystems. To be most effective, these areas should be strategically located in a manner that supports ecosystem function. To inform marine spatial planning and support strategic establishment of MPAs within the California Current System, we identified areas predict...

Foraging segregation may play an important role in the maintenance of animal diversity, and is a proposed mechanism for promoting genetic divergence within seabird species. However, little information exists regarding its presence among seabird populations. We investigated genetic and foraging divergence between two colonies of endangered Hawaiian...

We investigated intra-seasonal variation in foraging behavior of chick-rearing Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, during two consecutive summers at Cape Hallett, northwestern Ross Sea. Although foraging behavior of this species has been extensively studied throughout the broad continental shelf region of the Ross Sea, this is the first study to r...

Waters off the western Antarctic Peninsula (i.e., the eastern Bellingshausen Sea) are unusually complex owing to the convergence of several major fronts. Determining the relative influence of fronts on occurrence patterns of top-trophic species in that area, therefore, has been challenging. In one of the few ocean-wide seabird data syntheses, in th...

Recent research has clearly shown that the fear of predation, i.e. aversion to taking risks, among mesopredators or grazers, and not merely flight from an apex predator to avoid predation, is an important aspect of ecosystem structuring. In only a few, though well-documented cases, however, has this been considered in the marine environment. Herein...