Sentinel Species

Sentinel Species Latest News

Recently, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared the emperor penguin to be an endangered sentinel species.

About Sentinel Species

• It is a species whose members’ health signals the condition of the ecosystem in which they live.
• Characteristic: 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 change. 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

Source: TH

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