CCPO Speaker to Trace Breeding Success of Adelie Penguins

Adelie penguins in Antarctica will be the subject of a presentation in the Old Dominion University Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography (CCPO) Spring Seminar Series at 3:30 p.m. Monday, March 23. Tosca Ballerini, a postgraduate researcher at CCPO, will be the speaker.

The seminar in CCPO's Room 3200 in the Innovation Research Park@ODU Building 1 will be preceded by a reception with refreshments beginning at 3 p.m. The presentations in this series are free and open to the public.

Ballerini's topic is "Demographic Parameters and Population Dynamics of the Adelie Penguin Population at Edmonson Point, Victoria Land, Antarctica." Her research follows the population numbers and distribution of a penguin colony. The data serve as good indicators of food availability and sea-ice typology changes that may be related to global warming.

The CCPO researcher received her Ph.D. in polar biology from the University of Siena in Italy and worked with a team of Italian researchers that undertook in 1994 a long-term project monitoring the Adelie penguin population. She joined CCPO in 2008.