Avian predator-prey dynamics in a changing climate along the Western Antarctic Peninsula; a scoping review

Abstract

A unique characteristic of the food web along the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the fastest warming regions in the world, is that the avian tertiary predators seasonally rely on avian secondary predators for their subsistence. We conducted a scoping review to 1.) provide a summary of research on Antarctic avian predator-prey relationships, 2.) investigate potential avian predator-prey relationships and trends with the environment, and 3.) highlight research gaps and provide recommendations for future research. We searched Web of Science and Google Scholar for publications in English during any years. For our first aim, we searched using the terms "predator-prey dynamics" AND "Antarctica." We excluded results that did not include both avian predators and prey, which resulted in eight publications from around the Southern Ocean, and one along the WAP. For our second aim, we searched using the terms of each species' common and scientific names (gentoo penguin, Pygoscelis papua, Adelie penguin, P. adeliae, chinstrap penguin, P. antarcticus, southern giant petrel, Macronectes giganteus, south polar skua, Stercorarius maccormicki, brown skua, S. antarcticus) AND "population" AND "Antarctic Peninsula." We refined our results (N=59) to publications with data on at least one prey and one predator avian species of all papers found in Web of Science, and the first 100 records of Google Scholar. We selected five locations that had data spanning over 10 years and that spread across the northern WAP. We compared predator-prey species trends across time along with sea surface and air temperature. We found that predator-prey dynamics between avian secondary and tertiary predators have had limited investigations in Antarctica. Along the WAP, the relationship between different penguin species and avian tertiary predators are highly variable and many population trends are decoupled from local temperature change. We include recommendations for future data collection and research on these interactions.