Impact of heavy rainfall events and shading on the temperature of sea turtle nests
- PDF / 1,315,432 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 8 Downloads / 173 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Impact of heavy rainfall events and shading on the temperature of sea turtle nests Melissa N. Staines1 · David T. Booth1 · Christine A. Madden Hof2,3 · Graeme C. Hays4 Received: 5 June 2020 / Accepted: 28 October 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract While most studies assessing the ecological impacts of climate change have examined impacts from warming temperatures, less attention has been given to other parameters such as increased rainfall events. At a nesting rookery in the northern Great Barrier Reef, Australia, we used data loggers to examine the impact of heavy rainfall and shade on the nest temperatures for green (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) turtles clutches, which have temperature-dependent sex determination. In the middle of the nesting season (December–March), on 21 January 2019, 125 mm of rain fell over two days, causing the temperature to initially decrease by an average of ~ 3.6 °C in hawksbill turtle nests (n = 18) and ~ 3.5 °C in green turtle nests (n = 9). For shaded clutches during the 20-day cooling period after the rainfall event, we report average nest temperatures of ~ 27.9 °C and ~ 28.2 °C for hawksbill and green turtle clutches respectively, falling well into the maleproducing range for sex determination. This was profoundly cooler than the average nest temperatures of clutches without shade and prior to the heavy rainfall, which was ~ 31.3 °C for both species. Extreme rainfall events are predicted to increase around Australia due to climate change but may help counteract impacts of atmospheric warming on sea turtle offspring sex-ratios. Our results also show the potential for artificially cooling nests by applying a combination of shade and irrigation, to counter the expected increases in the feminisation of sea turtle hatchling production worldwide.
Introduction The impacts of climate warming on ecosystems have been widely studied with profound impacts on the distribution of species, breeding phenology and life-history traits (Bradshaw and Holzapfel 2006; Molinos et al. 2016; MacLean and Beissinger 2017). While some taxa are able to relocate in response to climate warming, either directly or via offspring Responsible Editor: L. Avens. Reviewed by undisclosed experts. * Melissa N. Staines [email protected] 1
School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
2
School of Science and Engineering, The University of Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, QLD 4556, Australia
3
World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia, Level 4, 340 Adelaide Street, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia
4
School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3280, Australia
dispersal (Perry et al. 2005; Chivers et al. 2017), immobile species with long generation times or those bound to particular sites, have more limited options to mitigate changing conditions and so may be heavily impacted (reviewed in MacLean and Beissinger 2017). For example, increasing water temperatu
Data Loading...
