Studies on nesting behaviour of turtles provide the most important information on their reproduction by providing estimates of female population size. Kosgoda, located in the southwest coast of Sri Lanka, has a year-round nesting rookery which is visited by five species of sea turtles, the green turtle being the most frequent visitor. Nesting behaviour of the female green turtle was studied at the Kosgoda rookery during a five-year period from August 2003 to July 2008. A total of 1,492 nests of the green turtle were recorded with a mean of 298.4 annual nests. Nesting took place year round, with 66 % of nesting recorded during February to June. The highest and the lowest number of nests were recorded in April and November, respectively. The average clutch size of a female green turtle was 111.5 and the clutch frequency was 2.17. The average annual nesting abundance in the study area was 138.28. Of the 2,297 nesting attempts, 805 were false crawls accounting for a nesting success of 65%. Females nesting at Kosgoda showed nest site fidelity. More than half of the females (54.3%) nested in the same beach twice or more (mean 2.17) during the same nesting season. The highest number of re-nesting recorded was ten and the mean inter-nesting interval was 13.5 days. Of the 519 individuals tagged during the study period, 56 re-visited the same beach for nesting during the subsequent nesting seasons with a mean re-migration interval of 2.56 years. One female visited the same beach three times for nesting during the study period (after 2.67 years and then after 1.83 years). The nesting behaviour of the green turtle at Kosgoda rookery was similar to those at Rekawa, the largest rookery in Sri Lanka, located in the southern coast 130 km away from Kosgoda. Rekawa beach was declared a sea turtle sanctuary in 2006. This study shows that Kosgoda beach also provides a significant nesting site for the green turtle and highlights the need to declare it as a sanctuary.
tt fi n g a tt K o s g o d a R o o k e r y , S r fi L a n k a E .M . L . E k a n a y a k e , T . K a p u r u s fi n g h e , M .M . S am a n , D . S . R a tt h n a k um a r a , P . S am a r aw e e r a & R . S . R a j a k a r u n a 2 6 J u n e 2 0 1 7 | V o l . 9 | N o . 6 | P p . 1 0 2 6 1 -1 0 2 6 8 1 0 . 1 1 6 0 9 / j o tt . 2 7 9 7 . 9 . 6 . 1 0 2 6 1 -1 0 2 6 8 T h r e a tt e n e d T a x a T h e J o u r n a l o f T h r e a tt e n e d T a x a fi s d e d fi c a tt e d tt o b u fi l d fi n g e v fi d e n c e f o r c o n s e r v a fi o n g l o b a l l y b y p u b l fi s h fi n g p e e r -r e v fi ew e d a r fi c l e s o n l fi n e e v e r y m o n tt h a tt a r e a s o n a b l y r a p fi d r a tt e a tt www . tt h r e a tt e n e d tt a x a . o r g. A l l a r fi c l e s p u b l fi s h e d fi n J o T T a r e r e g fi s tt e r e d u n d e r C r e a fi v e C omm o n s A tt r fi b u fi o n 4 . 0 I n tt e r n a fi o n a l L fi c e n s e u n l e s s o tt h e rw fi s e m e n fi o n e d . J o T T a l l ow s u n r e s tt r fi c tt e d u s e o f a r fi c l e s fi n a n y m e d fi um , r e p r o d u c fi o n , a n d d fi s tt r fi b u fi o n b y p r o v fi d fi n g a d e q u a tt e c r e d fi tt tt o tt h e a u tt h o r s a n d tt h e s o u r c e o f p u b l fi c a fi o n .O P E N A C C E S S P a r tt n e r www . tt h r e a tt e n e d tt a x a . o r g I S S N 0 9 7 4 -7 9 0 7 ( O n l fi n e ) | I S S N 0 9 7 4 -7 8 9 3 ( P r fi n tt ) Competing interests:The authors declare no competing interests.Author Details: see end of this article.Author Contribution: EMLE: Acquired and analyzed data and wrote the manuscript; TK: Supervised the data collection in the field; MMS and DSR: Collected data and samples from the field; PS: Contributed to study design and interpretation of data, supervised DNA work; RSR: Developed the concept, supervised the lab work and interpretation of data, edited and revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript. Acknowledgements:We thank the Turtle Conservation Project (TCP) staff for their technical support and the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), Sri Lanka for granting permission to carry out this study, Nancy FitzSimmons and M.P. Jensen for their valuable advice and guidance during the study, and Andrea Phillott for editing the manuscript. We also thank the National Science Abstract: We determined the genetic diversity of the Green Turtle Chelonia mydas (Linneaus, 1758) nesting at Kosgoda rookery, the second largest sea turtle aggregation on the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka. Skin tissue samples were collected from 68 nesting females and genetic diversity was estimated using six microsatellite loci. High genetic diversity was observed within the population as all loci analyzed were highly polymorphic with a total of 149 alleles observed. The mean number of alleles per locus was 24.7 and the mean observed and expected heterozygosity across all loci were 0.75 and 0.93, respectively. It appears that five...
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