Sea turtle hatchling locomotor performance: incubation moisture effects, ontogeny and species-specific patterns
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Sea turtle hatchling locomotor performance: incubation moisture effects, ontogeny and species‑specific patterns Christopher R. Gatto1 · Richard D. Reina1 Received: 28 April 2020 / Revised: 16 July 2020 / Accepted: 9 September 2020 / Published online: 21 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Incubation conditions are critical in determining numerous traits in reptilian neonates. This is particularly significant in species with low offspring survival such as sea turtle species, because of the extremely high predation rates that hatchlings face during their initial dispersal from nesting beaches. Hatchlings that develop in suboptimal nest environments are likely to be smaller, slower and more susceptible to predation than hatchlings from optimal nest environments. Previous studies have focused on the effects of temperature on hatchling traits, but few have investigated the effects of moisture concentrations, despite moisture levels in nests influencing hatchling size, sex, incubation duration, and hatching success. Here, we incubated eggs of three sea turtle species at various moisture levels and tested the terrestrial and aquatic locomotor performance of the resultant hatchlings during the frenzy and post-frenzy period. We also compared and evaluated the ontogeny of early locomotor performance for each species over the first months of life. Drier incubation conditions produced hatchlings that crawled more slowly and took longer to self-right than hatchlings from wetter incubation conditions. There was no difference in swimming performance associated with moisture treatments. We suggest that moisture in the nest environment during incubation may influence hatchling performance via their initial hydration levels. Thus, nest moisture influences terrestrial performance (i.e., escaping from the nest and dispersing across the beach), although upon entering the ocean hatchlings have the opportunity to rehydrate by drinking and thus, differences in locomotor performance associated with moisture treatments cease. Keywords Moisture · Swimming · Life history · Incubation conditions · Dispersal · Crawling
Introduction Many oviparous species lay their eggs in nests to reduce environmental fluctuations and optimise nest conditions (Blackburn 1999). However, embryos can still experience considerable environmental variation in nest conditions as a result of local weather and climatic variation (Ackerman et al. 1997; Cagle et al. 1993). Additionally, nest location can result in considerable differences in incubation Communicated by Philip Withers. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-020-01307-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Christopher R. Gatto [email protected] 1
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, 25 Rainforest Walk, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia
environments based on shade availability or proximity to water sources (Hill et
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