Effects of human activity on Royal penguins on Macquarie Island

This project empirically measures the effects of human activity on the behaviour, heart rate and egg-shell surface temperature of Royal penguins on Macquarie Island, as part of ASAC project 1148. This was achieved by collecting behavioural and physiological responses of individual penguins exposed to pedestrian approaches across the breeding stages of incubation, guard, creche and moult. Both single person and group approaches were also investigated. Information produced includes minimum approach guidelines.

As of April 2003 all data are stored on Hi-8 digital tape, due to be transformed during 2003 - 2004 into a timecoded tab-delimited text format for analysis using the Observer (Noldus Information Technology 2002).

Some notes about some of the fields in this dataset:

Temp file refers to whether or not egg shell surface temperature was also recorded for the sample, with the code below refering to the file name.

Neighbour refers to the behavioural control file for each sample (neighbouring nests did not recieve an artificial egg, and provide a behavioural control for responses to human approaches without the scientific treatment).

Nest refers to the randomly used nest markers for each sample.

Heart rate refers to whether heart rate was concurrently recorded with behaviour on the sample (both stored on Hi-8 tape).

Stimulus refers to whether single persons or groups of persons (5 -7, recorded within each sample) were used for the human approaches.

Environment refers to whether approaches were conducted from colony sections abuting pebbly beach or from poa tussock environs (tussock approaches less than 50 m of the poa / pebbly beach junction).

The code system for nest simply refers to the numbered tag placed at the nest (using three colours, g=green, w=white, b=brown) which were used randomly.

The fields in this dataset are:

Sample
Date
Breeding Phase
Stimulus Type
Environment
Colony
Nest
Tape
Heart Rate
Temp File
Neighbour

作为ASAC项目1148的组成部分，本项目通过实证方法探究了人类活动对麦夸里岛（Macquarie Island）皇家企鹅（Royal penguins）行为、心率及蛋壳表面温度的影响。研究通过采集处于孵化、育雏守护、幼雏集群及换羽等繁殖阶段的个体企鹅，在行人接近时的行为与生理响应实现上述目标；同时，本研究亦对单人接近及群体接近两种场景展开了调查。研究成果包含最低接近准则。

截至2003年4月，所有数据均存储于Hi-8数字磁带中，计划于2003-2004年间转换为带时间编码的制表符分隔文本格式，以便使用Observer软件（Noldus Information Technology 2002版）进行分析。

本数据集部分字段说明如下：

温度文件（Temp File）：指示该样本是否同步记录了蛋壳表面温度，其编码对应文件名。

邻近巢（Neighbour）：指每个样本的行为对照文件（邻近巢未放置人工卵，为人类接近响应提供未受实验处理的行为对照）。

巢（Nest）：指每个样本随机使用的巢标记。

心率（Heart Rate）：指示该样本是否同步记录了行为与心率数据（两者均存储于Hi-8磁带）。

刺激源（Stimulus）：指示人类接近场景为单人接近或群体接近（每组5-7人，相关信息记录于各样本中）。

环境（Environment）：指示接近行为发生于毗邻卵石滩的栖息地区域，还是南美蒲苇（poa tussock）生境（蒲苇区域的接近点距蒲苇与卵石滩交界处不足50米）。

本数据集包含以下字段：

样本
日期
繁殖阶段
刺激源类型
环境
栖息地
巢
磁带
心率
温度文件
邻近巢