It is likely one of the world’s most spectacular sights — large flocks or “flamboyances” of flamingos round East Africa’s lakes — as seen within the movie Out of Africa or David Attenborough’s A Excellent Planet.
However new analysis led by King’s School London has revealed how the lesser flamingo is at hazard of being flushed out of its historic feeding grounds, with severe penalties for the way forward for the species.
For the primary time satellite tv for pc earth commentary information has been used to check all the important thing flamingo feeding lakes in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania over twenty years and it recognized how rising water ranges are decreasing the birds’ important meals supply.
The authors warn the birds are more likely to be pushed into new unprotected areas within the seek for meals, particularly given predicted increased ranges of rainfall linked to local weather change.
They’re now calling for coordinated conservation motion throughout worldwide borders, improved monitoring and extra sustainable administration of land surrounding essential flamingo lakes.
Lead writer Aidan Byrne, a PhD scholar collectively supervised by King’s School London and the Pure Historical past Museum, stated the area was dwelling to greater than three quarters of the worldwide inhabitants of lesser flamingos, however their numbers are declining.
“Lesser flamingos in East Africa are more and more susceptible, significantly with elevated rainfall predicted for the area beneath local weather change. With out improved lake monitoring and catchment administration practices, the extremely specialised species present in soda lake ecosystems — together with lesser flamingos — could possibly be misplaced,” he stated.
The examine, printed within the journal Present Biology, is the primary through which satellite tv for pc earth commentary information has been used to check all 22 key flamingo feeding soda lakes in East Africa. This evaluation was mixed with local weather information and chook commentary information over greater than twenty years.
By learning on this massive scale, for the primary time researchers have been capable of see altering meals availability throughout the entire community of lakes, together with vital declines lately, and the way chook numbers decreased as lake floor space elevated. In addition they recognized the lakes the birds may transfer to sooner or later.
Co-author, Dr Emma Tebbs, from King’s School London stated while flamingos naturally journey searching for meals, the degradation of their historic feeding and breeding websites was a severe concern.
“East African populations might probably transfer north or south away from the equator searching for meals sources. And while six examine lakes elevated in habitat suitability from 2010 to 2022, solely three of these have some stage of conservation safety.
“Will increase in water ranges might result in lesser flamingos turning into extra reliant on lakes which can be unprotected, outdoors of present nature reserves and guarded websites, which has implications for conservation and ecotourism revenues.”
Soda lakes are a number of the harshest environments on Earth, being each extremely saline and really alkaline. Regardless of this, many species have advanced to thrive in these situations, together with the flamingo and its phytoplankton prey, which they filter from the water utilizing their sieve-like beaks.
The analysis discovered rising water ranges throughout the area’s soda lakes have been diluting their usually salty and alkaline nature, resulting in a decline in populations of phytoplankton, which was measured by the quantity of a photosynthetic pigment referred to as chlorophyll-a current within the lakes.
The workforce discovered that phytoplankton ranges have been declining over the 23 years of examine and linked this to will increase within the floor areas of the lakes over the identical interval.
The biggest losses in phytoplankton biomass occurred within the equatorial Kenyan lakes, notably on the essential vacationer lakes Bogoria, Nakuru and Elmenteita, and within the northern Tanzanian lakes that noticed the most important will increase in floor space.
Nakuru is likely one of the most essential flamingo feeding lakes in East Africa, traditionally supporting over a million birds at a time. The lake elevated in floor space by 91% from 2009 to 2022 while its imply chlorophyll-a concentrations halved.
Natron in Tanzania is the one common breeding web site for lesser flamingos in East Africa and it has skilled declining productiveness alongside rising water ranges lately. If phytoplankton biomass continues to say no there and at different close by feeding lakes, it would not be an appropriate breeding web site.
Along with scientists from the Division of Geography, King’s School London and the Pure Historical past Museum, the workforce additionally included researchers from Nationwide Museums of Kenya, the Tanzania Wildlife Analysis Institute, the Zoological Society of London, the College of Leicester, and the Freshwater Organic Affiliation.
