Genetic composition of a green turtle ( Chelonia mydas ) feeding ground population: evidence for multiple origins

Lahanas, Pete N.; Bjorndal, Karen A.; Bolten, Alan B.; Encalada, Sandra E.; Miyamoto, Michael M.; Valverde, Roldán A.; Bowen, Brian W.

doi:10.1007/s002270050254

Cited by 118 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Therefore, other factors, such as population sizes segregation through oceanographic currents and/or selection of specific feeding area, may determine the population composition of a mixed stock. Other studies have obtained similar results, concluding that distance is not a determinant factor in feeding ground composition (Lahanas et al, 1998;Luke et al, 2004). The genetic differences among Canary Islands and Andalusian feeding grounds are found only in the size class that is able to swim independently of the sea currents of the area, suggesting that active area selection should be higher in larger animals.…”

Section: Effects Of the Geographic Distance And Of The Swimming Capacsupporting

confidence: 52%

Variation in spatial distribution of juvenile loggerhead turtles in the eastern Atlantic and western Mediterranean Sea

Monzón‐Argüello

Rico

Carreras

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology

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a b s t r a c t Loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) originating from the Western Atlantic carry out one of the largest marine migrations, reaching the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. It has been proposed that this transatlantic journey is simply a consequence of drifting, with the lack of a target destination and a passive dispersal with oceanic currents. This predicts that the size of the source populations and geographic distance to the feeding grounds should play important roles in defining stock composition in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. Under this scenario, near pelagic stocks would have no genetic structure, and would be composed of similar cohorts from regional rookeries. To address this question, we sampled individuals from one important eastern Atlantic feeding ground, the Canary Islands, and sequenced a fragment of the mitochondrial DNA control region. We compared the composition of this feeding stock with published data of other proximal areas: Madeira, Azores and Andalusia. "Rookery-centric" mixed stock analysis showed that the distribution of loggerhead sea turtles along the eastern Atlantic feeding grounds was in latitudinal accordance to their natal origin: loggerhead turtles from Florida were significantly more abundant in Azores (30%) than in Canary Islands (13%), while those from Mexico had a poor representation in Azores (13%) but were more prevalent in Canary Islands (34%). Also, genetic stability in temporal and size analyses of the Canary Island aggregation was found, showing a long period of residency. These results indicate a nonrandom distribution of loggerhead juveniles in oceanic foraging grounds. We discuss possible explanations to this latitudinal variation..

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Section: Effects Of the Geographic Distance And Of The Swimming Capacsupporting

confidence: 52%

Variation in spatial distribution of juvenile loggerhead turtles in the eastern Atlantic and western Mediterranean Sea

Monzón‐Argüello

Rico

Carreras

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology

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“…Sea turtles have complex life histories where adults breed at rookeries and migrate to foraging grounds that are usually shared with animals from multiple genetic stocks (Lahanas et al 1998. A recent comprehensive study based on mtDNA analysis of green turtles found that the foraging populations around the Hawaiian Archipelago all comprised 1 genetic stock that belonged to the single Hawaiian breeding population at French Frigate Shoals .…”

Section: Conservation Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Green turtle population structure in the Pacific: new insights from single nucleotide polymorphisms and microsatellites

Roden¹,

Morin²,

Frey³

et al. 2013

Endang. Species. Res.

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A set of nuclear single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and microsatellite markers was used to detect genetic stock structure among 5 Pacific green turtle Chelonia mydas nesting populations. We sampled populations in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador (n = 57), Colola, Mexico (n = 75), French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii (n = 141), Yap, Micronesia (n = 73), and Wan-an, Taiwan (n = 57), to represent eastern, central, and western Pacific regions. A combination of 29 single independent SNPs and linked SNPs combined as haplotypes were used for a total of 20 independent markers. In addition, 8 polymorphic microsatellite markers were applied to the same sample set. Both sets of nuclear markers confirmed significant differentiation between all sampled populations in the 3 Pacific regions (p ≤ 0.001). The use of these SNPs and microsatellites resulted in sufficient power to detect small population differences not seen in previous studies using smaller numbers of nuclear markers. Our results suggest that male-mediated gene flow between regional nesting stocks is more limited than previously believed, allowing the potential to delineate stocks more clearly. Finally, we discuss the value of SNP markers as an alternative or complement to other nuclear markers such as microsatellites for the examination of stock structure.

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“…3 yr in the Greater Caribbean (Bjorndal et al 2005, Goshe et al 2010). This post-hatchling stage is strongly influenced by oceanic currents (Lahanas et al 1998) and is often referred to as the 'lost years' since the whereabouts of these small turtles remains unclear (Reich et al 2007). At ca.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and temporal variability of immature green turtle abundance and somatic growth in Puerto Rico

Patrício¹,

Díez²,

Dam³

2014

Endang. Species. Res.

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Understanding conservation needs relies on robust estimates of key population parameters, such as survival, abundance and somatic growth. We investigated the somatic growth and abundance dynamics of 2 aggregations of immature green turtles, at Tortuga Bay and Puerto Manglar (Culebra, Puerto Rico), throughout 15 yr of capture-mark-recaptures. We used nonlinear models to investigate the effects of carapace length, sampling year, growth interval and the presence of fibropapillomas on growth rates, and used the size-specific growth rate function to estimate how long turtles remain at each bay. Abundances were estimated and compared with timespecific growth rate functions, to infer density-dependency effects on somatic growth rates, and trends in abundance were evaluated by fitting generalized linear models. We found foraging site specific growth rates and report the highest mean somatic growth rate for green turtles in the wild (6.1 ± 1.7 cm yr −1 , at Puerto Manglar). The size-specific growth rate function was monotonic at both sites, with growth rates declining continuously with increasing carapace length. We inferred minimum ages at maturity of 14 and 22 yr, for Puerto Manglar and Tortuga Bay turtles, respectively. Throughout the 15 yr of this study there was a positive trend in aggregation size at Puerto Manglar (mean annual increase of 10.9%), which was not observed at Tortuga Bay. Our study highlights the influence of geography and habitat quality on somatic growth rates, and delivers robust demographic estimates valuable for local and regional assessments of the conservation status of the green turtle.

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Genetic composition of a green turtle ( Chelonia mydas ) feeding ground population: evidence for multiple origins

Cited by 118 publications

References 22 publications

Variation in spatial distribution of juvenile loggerhead turtles in the eastern Atlantic and western Mediterranean Sea

Variation in spatial distribution of juvenile loggerhead turtles in the eastern Atlantic and western Mediterranean Sea

Green turtle population structure in the Pacific: new insights from single nucleotide polymorphisms and microsatellites

Spatial and temporal variability of immature green turtle abundance and somatic growth in Puerto Rico

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