SHORT COMMUNICATION Vanessa M. Viera Æ Ce´line Le Bohec Steeve D. Coˆte´ Æ Rene´ Groscolas Massive breeding failures following a tsunami in a colonial seabird Received: 17 January 2006 / Revised: 17 February 2006 / Accepted: 17 February 2006 Ó Springer-Verlag 2006 Abstract Natural catastrophic events such as tsunamis may induce drastic decreases in breeding success of animal populations. We evaluate the impacts of flooding on the reproductive success of king penguins (Apteno- dytes patagonicus) in the Crozet Archipelago. On 26 December 2004, a magnitude-9 earthquake created a large tsunami that flooded a colony at 6,500 km from the epicentre of the earthquake. On 30 January 2005, severe waves again flooded the colony. About 17–20% of the surface of the colony was impacted during each flood and 44% of the breeding birds abandoned their egg or chick following the two floodings. Although about 11% of birds laid another egg after the tsunami, none reproduced again after the second flood that hap- pened later in the breeding season. Our results show that the tsunami directly affected the reproductive success of seabirds nesting near the coast. Introduction Catastrophic natural events linked to climate or geo- logical phenomena such as droughts, earthquakes, or tsunamis may induce major negative impacts on animal populations. Indeed, such natural disasters may cause a decrease in the population numbers by increasing indi- vidual mortality and breeding failures, i.e. abandonment of the current breeding event or mortality of dependent offspring. In addition, individuals may be affected indi- rectly by the impact of natural disasters on the abun- dance and distribution of food resources. Some populations may be more vulnerable to catastrophes than others depending on their habitat type and location (e.g. proximity to coast and human activities, non-shel- tered sites), population size (small populations are more likely to be decimated by local catastrophes), or the biology of the species (e.g. species with low fecundity, growth rate and ability to migrate will likely be more impacted) (Primack 2002). On 26 December 2004, a magnitude-9 earthquake originating from underneath the Indian Ocean 250 km off Northern Sumatra generated a tsunami (Lay et al. 2005). The impacts of the Asian tsunami on ecosystems from Indonesia to East Africa will take a long time to be assessed, but various species at different trophic levels and the physical structure of ecosystems were affected (Altaff et al. 2005; Ramachandran et al. 2005). The Asian tsunami flooded a colony of king penguins (Apt- enodytes patagonicus) in the Crozet Archipelago (46°25¢S, 51°45¢E), at 6,500 km from the epicentre of the earthquake. The king penguin is a seabird nesting in dense colonies on the coast of several sub-Antarctic is- lands between 45° and 55°S (Williams 1995). One month later, severe waves resulting from another ground swell at sea once more flooded the colony. In this paper, we assess the impacts of these floodings on the reproductive success of king penguins. Materials and methods Study area and study species The study area was the colony of ‘‘La Baie du Marin’’, on the east coast of Possession Island, Crozet Archi- pelago. More than 16,000 pairs of king penguins nest in the colony (Delord et al. 2004). With the help of pho- tographs, we estimated that the colony is covering approximately 28,000 m 2 . Sub-Antarctic weather pre- vails at the Crozet Archipelago, the mean annual tem- V. M. Viera Æ S. D. Coˆte´ (&) De´partement de Biologie and Centre d’e´tudes nordiques, Universite´ Laval, Sainte-Foy, G1K7P4, Que´bec, QUE, Canada E-mail: steeve.cote@bio.ulaval.ca Tel.: +1-418-6562131 Fax: +1-418-6562043 C. Le Bohec Æ R. Groscolas Æ V. M. Viera Centre d’E ´ cologie et Physiologie E ´ nerge´ tiques, CNRS, 23 rue Becquerel, 67087, Strasbourg Cedex 02, France Polar Biol (2006) DOI 10.1007/s00300-006-0128-3