<
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/climate/florida-green-sea-turtles-nesting-female.html>
"Green sea turtles had an exceptional nesting season on Florida’s beaches in
2023, with volunteers counting more than 74,300 nests, according to preliminary
data. That beats the previous record, from 2017, by a staggering 40 percent.
“The increase is an explosion” and a welcome surprise, said Simona Ceriani, a
research scientist who coordinated the annual survey for the Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission, the state agency that regulates and manages
wildlife. The count will continue through Oct. 31.
Sea turtles don’t reach sexual maturity until their twenties or thirties, so
what Florida is seeing now is very likely the result of conservation measures
put in place after green sea turtles were listed under the Endangered Species
Act in 1978, Dr. Ceriani said.
But researchers aren’t ready to claim a conservation victory just yet. Those
impressive nesting numbers are just “half the story,” according to Jeanette
Wyneken, a professor at Florida Atlantic University who has studied nesting sea
turtles for more than three decades.
That’s because, more than most creatures, sea turtles are particularly attuned
to a warming climate. In fact, the sex of a baby sea turtle isn’t determined by
its DNA but by the temperature of the sand in which its egg developed. Cooler
temperatures mean males, warmer ones mean more females.
According to Dr. Wyneken, who has been monitoring incubation temperatures and
sex ratios in the nests of green sea turtles in Palm Beach County since 2005,
in recent years the proportion of male green sea turtle hatchlings has dwindled
substantially. In the past few seasons, between 87 percent and 100 percent of
the hatchlings she has tested have been female.
In the short term, such a skewed sex ratio could actually be a boon to green
turtles. A breeding female lays between two and nine clutches of about 110 eggs
each in a season, and a greater proportion of females in any given generation
means more nests in the sand 20 years down the road. That is, Dr. Wyneken said,
as long as “there’s enough boys to service the girls.”"
Via
Future Crunch:
https://futurecrunch.com/226-eighth-continent/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
