Abstract
Population abundance data are often used to define species’ conservation status. Abundance of marine turtles is typically estimated using nesting beach monitoring data such as nest counts and clutch frequency (CF, i.e., the number of nests female turtles lay within a nesting season). However, studies have shown that CF determined solely from nesting beach monitoring data can be underestimated, leading to inaccurate abundance estimates. To obtain reliable estimates of CF for hawksbill turtles in northeastern Brazil (6.273356° S, 35.036271° W), the region with the highest nesting density in the South Atlantic, data from beach monitoring and satellite telemetry were combined from 2014 to 2019. Beach monitoring data indicated the date of first nesting event, while state-space modeling of satellite telemetry data indicated the departure date of turtles, allowing calculations of residence length at breeding site and CF estimates based on internesting intervals. Females were estimated to nest up to six times within the nesting season with CF estimates between 4.5 and 4.8 clutches per female. CF estimates were used to determine the number of nesting females at the study site based in two approaches: considering and not considering transient turtles. Our approach and findings highlight that transients heavily influence CF estimates and need for reconsideration of how this key parameter is commonly determined for marine turtle populations and the use of beach monitoring data and satellite telemetry for estimations of CF.
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Data availability
The satellite telemetry data that support the findings of this study are available from the Brazilian Environmental Agency (IBAMA—Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis) and ICMBio (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade), and beach monitoring data are available upon request from the corresponding author and with permission of IBAMA and ICMBio.
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Acknowledgements
Field work was conducted by Pro-TAMAR Foundation with participation of Centro TAMAR-ICMBio. Our gratitude is extended to the Santuário Ecológico de Pipa, Paulo Barata, Paolo Casale, Erik Allan Pinheiro dos Santos, Miguel Caceiro who provided valuable insights into the manuscript and all the field workers that helped during beach monitoring activities. We also thank the reviewers for their valuable suggestions which improved the manuscript.
Funding
The satellite telemetry data for this study were acquired as part of a licensing requirement for seismic surveys carried out by Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) and Spectrum Geo. We are thankful for support from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Gulf Research Program and the National Science Foundation.
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Conceptualization: AJBS and MMPBF, methodology: AJBS and Mariana MPBF, formal analysis and investigation: AJBS, writing—original draft preparation: AJBS, writing—review and editing: MMPBF, GC, and SC, data collection: AJBS, DHGV, and CB, and supervision: MMPBF.
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Santos, A.J.B., Vieira, D.H.G., Bellini, C. et al. Using data from nesting beach monitoring and satellite telemetry to improve estimates of marine turtle clutch frequency and population abundance. Mar Biol 168, 170 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-021-03983-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-021-03983-z