Emperor penguins are not only the largest species of penguin in the world but also one of the most unique They are very social living in colonies that can include hundreds of thousands of individuals Nevertheless emperor penguins are monogamous Having sel

The reading passage claims that emperor penguins could be considered monogamous. The author of the article also believes that they return to the same location every year and they are not endangered. However, the lecturer casts doubt on those ideas. She postulates that new data refuted these beliefs. First of all, the author assumes that emperor penguins are monogamous and they recognize the sound of their partner's call. Nevertheless, the speaker in the lecture states that this species could be identified as serially monogamous, which means mating with one partner per season. She further explains that emperor penguins are committed and dilligent to care for the chicks during the same season. Nonetheless, if they were not able to locate the same mate next year in a timely way, they would mate with another partner. More importantly, only fifteen percent of the penguins are able to find the same mate according to this tight time frame. Second, the excerpt contends that those birds return to the same rookery, which is the location where they were hatched, every year even though the path is different due to the shifting sea ice. On the other hand, the lecturer indicates that satellite images showed that there were six instances when the birds did not come back to the same nest each year. Instead, they founded a new rookery for the entire colony. The professor holds that this helped the researchers understand why some banded birds disappeared in previous studies. Lastly, the article posits that emperor penguin population are stable and not endangered, given the large number we have. On the contrary, the lecturer challenges this idea. She says that the species was classified under the endangered status as models of declining numbers predicts that the population could decrease to the third by the end of the century. This is mainly due to radical changes in marine life in the feeding habitats, plus the loss of sea ice.