The adaptive significance of crèches in the king penguin

Crèching behaviour in penguins is defined as the rearing of chicks by their own parents in large flocks called ‘crèches’. Although several hypotheses have been proposed to account for the behaviour, the factors inducing chicks to aggregate remain relatively poorly understood, in particular for colonial seabirds. We studied crèching behaviour in the king penguin, Aptenodytes […]