Little is known about the genetic mating system of the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, Lepidochelys kempii. Jensen et al. (2006) found a positive relationship between the incidence of multiple paternity (MP) and the estimated population size of rookeries. In the high density Kemp's ridley Rancho Nuevo rookery, Kichler et al. (1999) estimated 81% of nests were multiply sired (Wang 2004). If MP is positively related to nesting female density, then MP in Kemp's ridley should be lower on a low-density nesting beach on South Padre Island, Texas (SPI) than in a Mexico's much larger nesting population. We genotyped 154 hatchling tissue samples from nests on SPI at 14 microsatellite loci. Results using full sibship reconstruction as implemented in COLONY indicated that 52% of nests with two or more samples (11 of 21) exhibited MP. This suggests that this species does not follow the female density trend proposed by Jensen et al. (2006) and maintains high levels of MP and genetic variation across its nesting range.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TCU/oai:etd.tcu.edu:etd-05022011-162749 |
| Date | 02 May 2011 |
| Creators | Frankel, Anna |
| Contributors | Dean Williams |
| Publisher | Texas Christian University |
| Source Sets | Texas Christian University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/octet-stream |
| Source | http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-05022011-162749/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to TCU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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