Recruitment and remigration in a green turtle nesting colony
Carr A and Carr MH. 1970. Recruitment and remigration in a green turtle nesting colony. Biological Conservation. 2(4):282-284
Tabulation of length-frequencies in the sample of turtles measured at the breeding ground of the Green Turtle, Chelonia mydas, at Tortuguero, Costa Rica, during the exceptionally heavy nesting season of 1969, reveals a disproportionately large number of females 36 inches (91 ·44 em) long or less. Moreover, a disproportionately large number of these were untagged on arrival. The inference is that they were probably nesting for the first time. This is not self-evident, because each year some turtles are missed by the tagging crew, and therefore turn up without tags on subsequent nesting emergences. Recognizing true neophyte nesters is important to the study of the colony, because (1) growth is very slow after maturity is reached (only about 1/10 inch = 2·54 mm per year); (2) heavy turtling at the Nicaragua feeding ground reduces the average age of the female contingent of the colony; and, therefore, (3) the spread in length-frequency becomes increasingly dependent upon variation in maturation-size, rather than on differences in age. It now seems evident that this increase in neophyte recruitment was a factor in the increase in nesting density during 1969.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Carr, Archie; Carr, Marjorie
- Units
- SFCN
- Keywords
- breeding grounds, Costa Rica, Growth Rate, nesting density, turle ecology