New Zealand Journal of Zoology abstracts

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Z99052
Received 26 October 1999; accepted 9 June 2000

Fidelity and breeding success of the blue penguin Eudyptula minor on Matiu-Somes Island, Wellington, New Zealand

LEIGH BULL

School of Biological Sciences
Victoria University of Wellington
P.O. Box 600
Wellington, New Zealand
email: leigh.bull@vuw.ac.nz

Abstract  A study of the nesting habits and breeding biology of blue penguin Eudyptula minor was undertaken over the 1995-96 and 1996-97 breeding seasons on Matiu-Somes Island, Wellington, New Zealand. Male and female blue penguins tended to be faithful to both mates and nest sites, although there was insufficient evidence to detect any association between a bird's breeding success in 1995 and a subsequent change of mate or nest in 1996. Over the 1995 and 1996 seasons the recorded hatching success (0.51 ± 0.11 and 0.63 ± 0.10 respectively), fledging success (0.81 ± 0.12 and 0.85 ± 0.10 respectively) and reproductive success (0.41 ± 0.11 and 0.54 ± 0.11 respectively) were similar each season. There was no significant difference between the proportion of eggs laid, or eggs hatched and chicks fledged, between the two seasons. The mean number of chicks raised over the two seasons was 0.94 ± 0.05 per nest. Replacement clutches were laid by 11 per cent of failed breeders in each season, but only in 1996 were they successful in fledging chicks.

No significant difference was found between the breeding success of the Matiu-Somes Island blue penguin colony recorded during this study and a previous study undertaken on the island 40 years ago.

Keywords  blue penguin; Eudyptula minor; Matiu-Somes Island; breeding success; mate fidelity; nest fidelity

New Zealand Journal of Zoology, 2000, Vol. 27: 299-304

0301-4223/00/2704-0299 $7.00/0   (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 2000

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (699K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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