Gentoo

Mr Clarke will spend five months living with four other workers on Port Lockroy, alongside the resident Gentoo penguin colony.

Sphen the gentoo penguin - one half of a world-famous same-sex "power couple" - has died in Australia, aged 11.

A sub-Antarctic species, gentoo penguins on average live between 12 and 13 years and are famously romantic monogamists.

Staff first noticed an attraction between them when they saw them bowing to each other - a gentoo way of flirting.

In October 2023, the pathogen reached the Falkland Islands off Argentina, killing gentoo penguins and at least 30 black-browed albatrosses.