The Impact of Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination on the Population Dynamics of Green Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas)

The sex of the turtles is determined by the incubation temperature of the eggs during the mid-trimester of development. In green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas), recent studies show that sex ratios are changing, producing a female-biased sex ratio within the population. We developed a novel continuous...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBionatura Vol. 5; no. 1; pp. 1029 - 1038
Main Authors Herrera, Candy, Guerra, Evelyn, Rosas, Andrea, Wei, Yingying, Pringle, Jack, Espinoza, Baltazar, Song, Baojun
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 15.02.2020
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Summary:The sex of the turtles is determined by the incubation temperature of the eggs during the mid-trimester of development. In green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas), recent studies show that sex ratios are changing, producing a female-biased sex ratio within the population. We developed a novel continuous model to analyze the dynamics of the green sea turtle population long-term. We determine the safe operating space for the proportion of eggs that become male at which the population of green sea turtle can exist without going to extinction. When the proportion of male eggs leaves this range the overall turtles’ population collapses. Additionally, we examined how temperature changes affect the sex ratios of the green sea turtle population.
ISSN:1390-9347
1390-9355
DOI:10.21931/RB/2020.05.01.4