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Feathers as a Tool to Assess Mercury Contamination in Gentoo Penguins: Variations at the Individual Level

Feathers have been widely used to assess mercury contamination in birds as they reflect metal concentrations accumulated between successive moult periods: they are also easy to sample and have minimum impact on the study birds. Moult is considered the major pathway for mercury excretion in seabirds....

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Autores principales: Pedro, Sara, Xavier, José C., Tavares, Sílvia, Trathan, Phil N., Ratcliffe, Norman, Paiva, Vitor H., Medeiros, Renata, Pereira, Eduarda, Pardal, Miguel A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4564222/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26352664
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137622
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author Pedro, Sara
Xavier, José C.
Tavares, Sílvia
Trathan, Phil N.
Ratcliffe, Norman
Paiva, Vitor H.
Medeiros, Renata
Pereira, Eduarda
Pardal, Miguel A.
author_facet Pedro, Sara
Xavier, José C.
Tavares, Sílvia
Trathan, Phil N.
Ratcliffe, Norman
Paiva, Vitor H.
Medeiros, Renata
Pereira, Eduarda
Pardal, Miguel A.
author_sort Pedro, Sara
collection PubMed
description Feathers have been widely used to assess mercury contamination in birds as they reflect metal concentrations accumulated between successive moult periods: they are also easy to sample and have minimum impact on the study birds. Moult is considered the major pathway for mercury excretion in seabirds. Penguins are widely believed to undergo a complete, annual moult during which they do not feed. As penguins lose all their feathers, they are expected to have a low individual-variability in feather mercury concentration as all feathers are formed simultaneously from the same somatic reserves. This assumption is central to penguin studies that use feathers to examine the annual or among-individual variation in mercury concentrations in penguins. To test this assumption, we measured the mercury concentrations in 3–5 body feathers of 52 gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) breeding at Bird Island, South Georgia (54°S 38°W). Twenty-five percent of the penguins studied showed substantial within-individual variation in the amount of mercury in their feathers (Coefficient of Variation: 34.7–96.7%). This variation may be caused by differences in moult patterns among individuals within the population leading to different interpretations in the overall population. Further investigation is now needed to fully understand individual variation in penguins’ moult.
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spelling pubmed-45642222015-09-17 Feathers as a Tool to Assess Mercury Contamination in Gentoo Penguins: Variations at the Individual Level Pedro, Sara Xavier, José C. Tavares, Sílvia Trathan, Phil N. Ratcliffe, Norman Paiva, Vitor H. Medeiros, Renata Pereira, Eduarda Pardal, Miguel A. PLoS One Research Article Feathers have been widely used to assess mercury contamination in birds as they reflect metal concentrations accumulated between successive moult periods: they are also easy to sample and have minimum impact on the study birds. Moult is considered the major pathway for mercury excretion in seabirds. Penguins are widely believed to undergo a complete, annual moult during which they do not feed. As penguins lose all their feathers, they are expected to have a low individual-variability in feather mercury concentration as all feathers are formed simultaneously from the same somatic reserves. This assumption is central to penguin studies that use feathers to examine the annual or among-individual variation in mercury concentrations in penguins. To test this assumption, we measured the mercury concentrations in 3–5 body feathers of 52 gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) breeding at Bird Island, South Georgia (54°S 38°W). Twenty-five percent of the penguins studied showed substantial within-individual variation in the amount of mercury in their feathers (Coefficient of Variation: 34.7–96.7%). This variation may be caused by differences in moult patterns among individuals within the population leading to different interpretations in the overall population. Further investigation is now needed to fully understand individual variation in penguins’ moult. Public Library of Science 2015-09-09 /pmc/articles/PMC4564222/ /pubmed/26352664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137622 Text en © 2015 Pedro et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Pedro, Sara
Xavier, José C.
Tavares, Sílvia
Trathan, Phil N.
Ratcliffe, Norman
Paiva, Vitor H.
Medeiros, Renata
Pereira, Eduarda
Pardal, Miguel A.
Feathers as a Tool to Assess Mercury Contamination in Gentoo Penguins: Variations at the Individual Level
title Feathers as a Tool to Assess Mercury Contamination in Gentoo Penguins: Variations at the Individual Level
title_full Feathers as a Tool to Assess Mercury Contamination in Gentoo Penguins: Variations at the Individual Level
title_fullStr Feathers as a Tool to Assess Mercury Contamination in Gentoo Penguins: Variations at the Individual Level
title_full_unstemmed Feathers as a Tool to Assess Mercury Contamination in Gentoo Penguins: Variations at the Individual Level
title_short Feathers as a Tool to Assess Mercury Contamination in Gentoo Penguins: Variations at the Individual Level
title_sort feathers as a tool to assess mercury contamination in gentoo penguins: variations at the individual level
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4564222/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26352664
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137622
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