Data from: Study "Green turtles (Chelonia Mydas); Hays; Chagos Archipelago, Western Indian Ocean"

Hays GC, Esteban N, Rattray A. 2024. Data from: Study "Green turtles (Chelonia Mydas); Hays; Chagos Archipelago, Western Indian Ocean". Movebank Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5441/001/1.313

Abstract

Estimating the absolute number of individuals in populations and their fecundity is central to understanding the ecosystem role of species and their population dynamics as well as allowing informed conservation management for endangered species. Estimates of abundance and fecundity are often difficult to obtain for rare or cryptic species. Yet, in addition, here we show for a charismatic group, sea turtles, that are neither cryptic nor rare and whose nesting is easy to observe, that the traditional approach of direct observations of nesting has likely led to a gross overestimation of the number of individuals in populations and underestimation of their fecundity. We use high-resolution GPS satellite tags to track female green turtles throughout their nesting season in the Chagos Archipelago (Indian Ocean) and assess when and where they nested. For individual turtles, nest locations were often spread over several tens of kilometres of coastline. Assessed by satellite observations, a mean of 6.0 clutches (range 2–9, s.d. = 2.2) was laid by individuals, about twice as many as previously assumed, a finding also reported in other species and ocean basins. Taken together, these findings suggest that the actual number of nesting turtles may be almost 50% less than previously assumed.

Keywords

Chelonia mydas,animal movement,animal tracking,Argos,GPS,green sea turtle,reptiles,satellite telemetry

Taxa

Taxon

Chelonia mydas

Green Sea Turtle, common green sea turtle

Sensors

Sensor

GPS

Sensor

Argos Doppler Shift

DOIs of related Publications

https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.2581

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.05.086

URI

https://datarepository.movebank.org/handle/10255/move.1688

BibTex

@misc{001/1_313,
  title = {Data from: Study "Green turtles (Chelonia Mydas); Hays; Chagos Archipelago, Western Indian Ocean"},
  author = {Hays, GC and Esteban, N and Rattray, A},
  year = {2024},
  URL = {http://dx.doi.org/10.5441/001/1.313},
  doi = {doi:10.5441/001/1.313},
  publisher = {Movebank data repository}
}

RIS

TY  - DATA
ID  - doi:10.5441/001/1.313
T1  - Data from: Study "Green turtles (Chelonia Mydas); Hays; Chagos Archipelago, Western Indian Ocean"
AU  - Hays, Graeme C.
AU  - Esteban, Nicole
AU  - Rattray, Alex
Y1  - 2024/01/23
KW  - Chelonia mydas
KW  - animal movement
KW  - animal tracking
KW  - Argos
KW  - GPS
KW  - green sea turtle
KW  - reptiles
KW  - satellite telemetry
KW  - Chelonia mydas
PB  - Movebank data repository
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.5441/001/1.313
DO  - doi:10.5441/001/1.313
ER  -

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