Little Penguins In Australia Experiencing High ‘Divorce’ Rates, According To New Study
Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor) are now known to “divorce” their partners for better mates yearly. Unfortunately, the amount of time they spend trying to find a new mate causes the colony to suffer, according to a new study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
LiveScience reported that it’s actually a common misconception that penguins mate for life when their breeding patterns and habits actually vary between the multiple species of penguin on Earth.
Little penguins specifically often do return to the same mate annually, however, some of them end up leaving their partner in search for a new one. Scientists appropriately are now referring to this as “penguin divorce.”
The study stated that divorce rates among penguins can actually reveal a lot of information referring to the health of the colony. The team behind the research was from Monash University in Australia. They explained that they looked at environmental and social factors in little penguins to gain greater knowledge on their reproductive success across 13 breeding seasons.
They looked at a colony on Phillip Island in Australia made up of 37,000 little penguins. This is the world’s largest colony of penguins.
“In good times, they largely stick with their partners, although there’s often a bit of hanky-panky happening on the side,” study co-author Richard Reina, head of the ecophysiology and conservation research group at Monash University in Australia, said in a statement.
“However, after a poor reproductive season they may try to find a new partner for the next season to increase their breeding success.”
Researchers hypothesize that penguins divorce for a multitude of reasons like failure to reproduce and environmental stress.
When a lot of penguins divorce during the same season, reproductive rates decrease. Newer couples also have a harder time breeding and producing offspring. As couples spend more time together, their success in having offspring increases.
“Our results also suggest that monitoring divorce rates could offer a valuable, noninvasive tool for tracking reproductive trends in seabirds, particularly in populations facing fluctuating environmental conditions,” the study authors wrote.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.