The younger life history stages of marine turtles (eggs, hatchlings) often fail to survive. To compensate, sea turtles nest several times/season and produce large clutches of eggs. The hawksbill produces the largest clutches (150 eggs) and the smallest hatchlings of any marine turtle. My study, done at Jumby Bay in Antigua, West Indies, was designed to determine whether they did so to compensate for loss in the nest, hatchling loss in the water, or both factors. I
found that most of the eggs (79 %) survived to become hatchlings that left the nest and entered the sea. However, 88 % of the hatchlings swimming offshore were taken by predators within minutes after they began their migration. These results suggest that at Jumby Bay, large clutch size is favored in hawksbills because of predation pressures on the hatchlings. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fau.edu/oai:fau.digital.flvc.org:fau_13094 |
| Contributors | Reising, Megan (author), Salmon, Michael (Thesis advisor), Charles E. Schmidt College of Science (Degree grantor), Department of Biological Sciences |
| Publisher | Florida Atlantic University |
| Source Sets | Florida Atlantic University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 56 p., Online Resource |
| Rights | All rights reserved by the source institution, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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