Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project: Database of abundance and distribution for the Adélie, chinstrap, gentoo, emperor, macaroni and king penguin south of 60 S.

Abstract

Background: 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; www.penguinmap.com), a browser-based search and visualisation tool designed primarily for policy-makers and other non-specialists, and mapppdr, an R package developed to assist the Antarctic science community. This dataset contains records of Pygoscelisadeliae, Pygoscelisantarctica, Pygoscelispapua, Eudypteschrysolophus, Aptenodytespatagonicus and Aptenodytesforsteri annual nest, adult and/or chick counts conducted during field expeditions or collected using remote sensing imagery, that were subsequently gathered by the Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project from published and unpublished sources, at all known Antarctic penguin breeding colonies south of 60 S from 01-11-1892 to 12-02-2022-02-12.

New information: 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 Previously unpublished data derive primarily from recent surveys collected under the auspices of the Antarctic Site Inventory, Penguin Watch or by the Lynch Lab at Stony Brook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.