Sentinel Species:
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared the emperor penguin to be an endangered species.
- It is a species whose members’ health signals the condition of the ecosystem in which they live.
- They are among the first to respond to stressors in their environment, such as pollution and disease.
- Their response also tends to be more apparent than most other species.
- They can provide early warnings of ecosystem decline.
- These species tend to occupy a fixed territory and live long enough to accumulate toxins.
- They also have physiologies that amplify the effects of environmental Thus, when something goes wrong in their habitat, they show it first.
- Examples:
- Frog: Their skin is permeable and absorbs whatever enters the water or soil around them, making them very sensitive to pesticides and pathogens.
- Canaries in coal mines worked on the same principle: the bird’s faster metabolism made it succumb to carbon monoxide before human miners could notice anything.
- Honeybees: Researchers used this to track agricultural chemical loads.
- Polar bears are observed to monitor Arctic contaminant accumulation
