MSc Student
Advisor: Christian Schulze

Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna

Abstract

The Zoo Vienna takes an essential role in the breeding program of the Northern Rockhopper penguin in Europe, considering the large number of offspring and the high rate of penguins being transferred to other zoos.

The breeding situation of this penguin species in captivity seems to be very challenging for an unknown reason. Real breeding success occurs only in the Zoo Vienna.

Hence, it is necessary to gain primary knowledge about population dynamics of the Rockhopper penguins at Schönbrunn. Descriptive statistics are used to obtain more information about the breeding seasons (2005-2020) with reference to birth origin of the animals, sex ratio, number of breeding pairs, sexual maturity, breeding success, duration of pair bonding etc.

Collected weight data of all hand reared chicks are analyzed with SPSS to create growth curves.

As the population consists of wild born and captive born individuals, a comparison of the breeding success between different birth origins has been determined using SPSS, with special attention to the reproductive success of female individuals.

The results evaluated so far indicate that the mate choice of the wild born females is dependent on the birth origin of the male.

According to the current evaluations the growth curves of the chicks correspond to those of wild born chicks.