The breeding biology of erect-crested penguins, Eudyptes sclateri: Hormones, behavior, obligate brood reduction and conservation.

Erect-crested penguins are the least studied of all penguins. They breed on two isolated subantarctic island groups, the Antipodes and Bounty Islands. Sporadic nest counts indicate a dramatic decline in numbers of erect-crested penguins over the last 50 years. Here we present data from a study undertaken in 1998 on the breeding biology, behavior and hormones of erect-crested penguins. It represents, even today, by far the most detailed data available on this species. The penguins exhibited extreme reversed egg-size dimorphism, whereby the first-laid A-egg was much smaller than the second-laid B-egg. A-eggs were lost before (42.3%) or on (37.8%) the day the B-egg was laid, and none survived more than 7 days after that. The penguins were in a low state of reproductive readiness, as evidenced by low levels of copulation, fighting, and testosterone in males during the courtship/laying period when, curiously, plasma levels of testosterone were at least as high in females. The laying interval (5.4 days) is the longest recorded for any penguin species, and incubation was highly variable until clutch completion. Most nests (91.2%) contained no nesting material and eggs were laid directly onto the ground. A-eggs were lost mainly by rolling out of the nest. However, even when prevented from doing so by an experimental manipulation, A-eggs survived no longer than those in control nests. Testosterone levels in males increased after clutch completion, when they remained in attendance at the nest for up to 13 days, despite females assuming most of the incubation duties. The bills of males were significantly larger than those of females and probably help with guarding the nest. We discuss explanations for obligate brood reduction in crested penguins and the options for conservation in light of our census results, which indicate that this enigmatic penguin species could be in trouble.

Transformation of the media landscape: Infotainment versus expository narrations for communicating science in online videos.

Society is undergoing a transformation in the way people consume media: increasingly we are using online on-demand videos, with the fastest growing segment of online videos about science being user-generated content that uses an infotainment style of delivery, in contrast to the traditional expository narrations of professionally generated content. In this study, we produced two otherwise identical videos about climate change to test the effects of an infotainment or expository narration. A total of 870 survey participants (419 English; 451 Spanish) were randomly presented with either an infotainment or expository version of the video. The expository narration was liked and believed more, and this held irrespective of language, age, sex or online viewing habits. However, the infotainment version was liked more by viewers without a university education and, further, viewers were better able to recall information from it, suggesting that user-generated content with infotainment-style narrations may actually be good for increasing public understanding of science.