Thanks to the generous support of Zoo Augsburg in Germany, Dr. Eric Wagner and Katie Holt were able to return to Punta Tombo for a couple of weeks in April. There, they put twenty satellite tags on penguins—ten females and ten males—that were about to start their post-breeding migration. As of today 18 satellite tags are still transmitting to our […]
We continued our Punta Tombo field season this winter with graduate student Erik Johansson, former undergrad lab member Chloe Rabinowitz, and program coordinator Kalyna Durbak staying on site from January 12 through February 21. Our goal for this trip was to attach GTA* and GPS tags on adult penguins who were actively feeding chicks in order to log their foraging
Find Eric’s latest entry “The Bird Flu Chronicles” on The Last Word on Nothing blog. In it he talks about one of the lab’s favorite penguins, Turbo. Here’s a short excerpt: On my final day at Tombo, I made one last run to the gull colony. We would depart in the morning. How were we leaving the penguins? Much as
Written by Dr. Dee Boersma The ongoing pinniped (seals and walruses) die-off on Peninsula Valdés is catastrophic. Our contacts in Argentina–two local veterinarians (Marci Uhart and Ralph Vanstreels), and Claudia Campagna of WCS–tell us that hundreds and potentially thousands of sea lions and elephant seals have died. Avian flu (more widely known as bird flu) has devastated seabird populations throughout
Written by Leigh West African wild dogs are very social animals, living in groups called packs. Wild dog packs have a dominant male and female, and it is this dominant pair that breeds each year to produce litters of pups. Packs of wild dogs are very cooperative, hunting and raising their young together. Two of the wild dogs that the
Dr. Eric Wagner’s latest essay, The Molt, can be found on the website The Last Word On Nothing. Here’s a small excerpt: A living animal is alive all the time. Every moment matters in an unending stream of being, whether we are watching or not. This isn’t an end for the penguins. It isn’t a beginning, either. They are simply
After Assistant Professor of Biology and Boersma Endowed Chair Dr. Briana Abrahms and her team deployed GPS-audio wildlife tracking collars on African wild dogs and lions during the summer of 2022, Dr. Abrahms and Dr. Kasim Rafiq, a postdoc in the Abrahms Lab, have been working with industry collaborators to build AI models that detect behaviors (such as hunting) and hunger levels
Thanks to the generous support of Zoo Augsburg in Germany, Dr. Ginger Rebstock and Dr. Eric Wagner were able to return to Punta Tombo for a couple of weeks in April. There, they put twenty satellite tags on penguins—ten females and ten males—that were about to start their post-breeding migration. From last year’s tagging effort, we know that females hug
In January and February of 2023 Dr. Dee Boersma, along with PhD students Katie Holt (Boersma Lab) and Erik Johansson (Abrahms Lab), spent six weeks in Punta Tombo to set up the remote scales that weigh penguins on their way in and out of the breeding area, and followed 19 penguins using GPS tags. The three of them were also able
