Corresponding author: Christian Che-Castaldo (
Academic editor: Anton P. van de Putte
The Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project is an effort to collate all known information about the distribution and abundance of Antarctic penguins through time and to make such data available to the scientific and management community. The core data product involves a series of structured tables with information on known breeding sites and surveys conducted at those sites from the earliest days of Antarctic exploration through to the present. This database, which is continuously updated as new information becomes available, provides a unified and comprehensive repository of information on Antarctic penguin biogeography that contributes to a growing suite of applications of value to the Antarctic community. One such application is the Mapping Application for Antarctic Penguins and Projected Dynamics (MAPPPD;
This dataset collates together all publicly available breeding colony abundance data (1979-2022) for Antarctic penguins in a single database with standardised notation and format. Colony locations have been adjusted as necessary using satellite imagery and each colony has been assigned a unique four-digit alphanumeric code to avoid confusion. These data include information previously published in a variety of print and online formats as well as additional survey data not previously published. Previously unpublished data derive primarily from recent surveys collected under the auspices of the Antarctic Site Inventory, Penguin Watch or by the Lynch Lab at Stony Brook University.
The Antarctic is one of the most rapidly changing regions of the planet, but the size and remoteness of the continent coupled with the logistical constraints of access have made it difficult to comprehensively map the distribution and abundance of species that breed or forage within its boundaries. While the Antarctic has been spared many of the anthropogenic disturbances faced by more developed parts of the planet, a confluence of factors leave the Antarctic no better off in terms of our global biodiversity targets (
Two major developments over the last decade have transformed our ability to track Antarctic penguin populations at the pan-Antarctic scale. First, the use of satellite imagery to identify penguin colonies has rapidly expanded over the last 15 years and satellite-based surveys have moved from a series of scattered demonstration projects to a well-established and well-documented means of both mapping the locations of colonies and tracking abundance at those colonies through time. This has had a tremendous impact on our ability to clarify the precise locations of colonies and, importantly, to document where penguins are not breeding. The combination of true presence and true absence (within detection thresholds) allows us an unprecedented overview of the biogeography of these species and satellites have allowed us to estimate abundance even in colonies too remote for direct survey. Satellites have been instrumental in completing the first global population estimates of emperor penguins (
Secondly, an effort initially sponsored by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop a database and browser-based search tool called MAPPPD (Mapping Application for Penguin Populations and Projected Dynamics) precipitated an effort to comprehensively catalogue the precise location of all Antarctic penguin colonies and to assemble all publicly available census data published on the abundance at those colonies since 1979. It is worth noting that here we formally define and describe the organisation of this penguin biogeography dataset and that this effort is complementary to, but not identical with, the MAPPPD interface described by
To provide open access penguin population census data to the general public.
Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project: Database of abundance and distribution for the Adélie, chinstrap, gentoo, emperor, macaroni and king penguin south of 60 S.
Christian Che-Castaldo, Heather Lynch, Grant Humphries.
This project was initially funded by NASA Award NNX14AC32G under the NASA Ecosystem Forecasting programme. Continued funding for database expansion and updating provided by NASA Award 80NSSC21K1027 under the Biodiversity programme, a 2022 Pew Fellowship for Marine Conservation and the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University.
This dataset describes the abundance and distribution of six species of Antarctic breeding penguins (Adélie, gentoo, chinstrap, emperor, macaroni and king) at all sites south of 60 S (Fig.
This database includes all known records of penguin breeding abundance and distribution south of 60 S. Data sources include peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts, expedition reports and other public datasets outside the scientific literature, management and policy documents and private communications. Abundance estimates are derived primarily from direct ground counting, imagery collected by remotely-piloted aircraft systems and satellite imagery. Additional data types include counts from aerial, ground or vessel-based photographs.
All records were validated. Coordinates were verified and plotted on a map to verify the actual geographical location corresponding to its locality. All scientific names were checked for typos and matched to the species information backbone of Worlds Register of Marine Species (http://marinespecies.org/) and LSID were assigned to each taxa as scientificNameID. Event date and time are validated to be in ISO 8601 format. To the extent necessary, authors were contacted to verify data that were ambiguous.
Data contained within the core database include information collated from peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts, expedition reports and other public data outside the scientific literature, management and policy documents and private communications. These data contain information on breeding pairs of penguins only and does not contain information on non-breeding distributions or sightings-at-sea. The fundamental unit of this database is the breeding "site", which represents a population breeding on a single island or, in some cases, a discrete area of a larger landmass. In some cases, a geographically distributed population may be divided into multiple "sites" depending on the logistics of ground surveys, where each "site" can be accessed from a single landing location along the coastline. Rarely, several smaller nesting areas will be aggregated into a single "site" following historical precedent. Each site is associated with a unique four digit alphanumeric code, a name and a specific geographic location. Note that several species may inhabit a single "site". Data are ingested into the database manually and extensively checked against existing maps and records to ensure consistency. Due to the complexity of the geography and the different naming systems, site names may be changed between a published record and the database.
The database includes data on the number of nests (equivalently, breeding pairs), the number of chicks or the number of total adults. If multiple measures are available (a count of nests and also a count of chicks), the database will include all data points as separate entries. Each data point is associated with information on the survey date, the survey method, an estimate of the accuracy of each data point and a reference. In this database, we follow the five-point scale initially used by
Some data are not eligible to be included in this database. Data that are collected at a spatial scale other than the "site" cannot be included. All data must be "site-wide" census estimates. In keeping with our commitment to open-source data, data that are not in the public domain or remain in private collections unavailable to the public are also not included in this database. Data that cannot be verified and/or cannot be unambiguously assigned to a "site" are not included. Data on the presence of breeding pairs absent from a population estimate are included only when no survey data exist.
While traditional methods of surveying penguin colonies rely on the direct enumeration of penguin nests by ground-based researchers, more recent surveys have relied on various remote sensing methods. Remotely-piloted aircraft systems (RPAS; also known as drones, quadcopters or unmanned aerial vehicles) take photographs from a low-altitude flight over the colony and yield photographs sufficient for the individual enumeration of nests, chicks or adults. While the precision of such counts depends on the timing of the survey and the quality of the imagery, RPAS are capable of providing exceptionally precise counts and are often in the high accuracy category of N1. Satellite imagery can identify the areal extent of breeding colonies through the spectral properties of penguin guano and these estimates can be used to estimate the number of breeding pairs at a "site". As the precision of such estimates remains an active research question, all such estimates are assigned the lowest accuracy category of N5 (broadly defined as "order-of-magnitude").
In some cases, data from a single location in a given year are published in multiple venues. However, it is difficult to know whether these multiple outlets represent one actual sampling event because the same event may be associated with different occurrence or abundance records between sources, either because earlier mistakes were corrected or because data were re-analysed. It also can happen that a single site is surveyed multiple times by separate parties on the same day, arriving at different counts due to observation error. Our approach is to classify an event as a survey conducted at a specific site and time, using a specific sampling protocol, and reported in a specific publication (peer-reviewed article, policy document, thesis or other type of report), dataset or personal communication. From each event, there can be one or more occurrence or measurement records, depending on the number of species or life stages reported. In cases where we have information that data from a unique sampling event are published in multiple venues, we retain all records reported in publications and datasets and drop duplicate records if the duplicate event is based on personal communication. We allow this potential duplication because: 1) it is not clear which source is ultimately correct if counts differ between sources and 2) withholding records creates confusion with our end-users as to whether we have overlooked sources of data.
Penguin breeding colonies located at or very near sea level distributed around the Antarctic continent and along the Antarctic Peninsula as well as on outlying islands in the Southern Ocean.
-77.71 and -60.55 Latitude; -157.7 and 171.17 Longitude.
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1892-11-01 through 2022-02-12
Open Data Commons Attribution License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License.
Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project: Database of abundance and distribution for the Adélie, chinstrap, gentoo, emperor, macaroni and king penguin south of 60 S.
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Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project: Database of abundance and distribution for the Adélie, chinstrap, gentoo, emperor, macaroni and king penguin south of 60 S.
Darwin Core
2.3
The Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project is an effort to collate all known information about the distribution and abundance of Antarctic penguins through time and to make such data available to the scientific and management community. The data are published as a standardised Darwin Core Archive and includes an event core and occurrence and eMoF extensions.
Column label | Column description |
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eventID | |
eventDate | |
year | |
month | |
day | |
decimalLatitude | |
decimalLongitude | |
coordinateUncertaintyInMetres | |
geodeticDatum | |
locality | |
locationID | |
islandGroup | |
waterBody | |
higherGeography | |
higherGeographyID | |
country | |
countryCode | |
continent | |
samplingProtocol | |
occurrenceID | |
basisOfRecord | |
type | |
kingdom | |
phylum | |
class | |
order | |
family | |
genus | |
taxonRank | |
scientificName | |
scientificNameID | |
scientificNameAuthorship | |
vernacularName | |
occurrenceStatus | |
lifeStage | |
organismRemarks | |
reproductiveCondition | |
organismQuantity | |
organismQuantityType | |
datasetName | |
language | |
associatedReferences | |
measurementID | |
measurementTypeID | The nature of the measurement, here relying on codes from the NERC vocabulary server (NVS). We mapped an OrganismQuantityType of nests to a measurementType of breeding pairs and an OrganismQuantityType of individuals to a measurementType of individuals. |
measurementType | |
measurementValue | |
measurementUnitID | The units of the measurement, here relying on codes from the NERC vocabulary server (NVS), here being dimensionless. |
measurementUnit | |
measurementAccuracy |
Che-Castaldo C, Humphries G, Lynch H (2023): Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project: Database of abundance and distribution for the Adélie, chinstrap, gentoo, emperor, macaroni and king penguin south of 60 S. v.2.2. SCAR - AntOBIS. Dataset/Samplingevent.
H.J.L. and C.C.-C. would like to acknowledge funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ecosystem Forecasting programme (Awards NNX14AC32G and 80NSSC21K1027). Yi Ming Gan provided much appreciated advice on the metadata standards and Darwin core archive format for this submission, in the Framework of EU-Lifewatch (BELSPO, contract n°FR/36/AN1/AntaBIS). H.J.L. would also like to acknowledge funding from the Pew Marine Fellowship Program. C.C.-C. acknowledges financial support from the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University.
Areas in or along the A) Antarctic Peninsula, B) Ross Sea and Victoria Land and C) eastern Antarctica that contain the largest density of Antarctic penguin breeding colonies, whose locations are represented as orange circles. All breeding colony locations are taken from the Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project: Database of abundance and distribution for the Adélie, chinstrap, gentoo, emperor, macaroni and king penguin south of 60 S event core archive.