Female green turtles migrate more than twice as far as males after breeding

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-09-28 09:01

International

Green_Turtle_(Chelonia_mydas)_(6133097542) By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE - Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas), CC BY-SA 2.0

International scientists say female green turtles (Chelonia mydas) migrate up to 1,000km after laying their eggs on beaches, while lazy males clock up a measly 400km. The team used satellite-tracking devices attached to 12 male turtles at a breeding site in West Africa, and compared their migration with 13 females traced during the same season from the same location. They say we previously knew about female migrations, but nobody had investigated what the males get up to following breeding season, until now. The findings provide new insight into the way sea turtles live and may have important implications for their protection in the wild, the researchers conclude.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Turtle migration - Satellite-tracking reveals sex-specific migration distance in green turtles (Chelonia mydas)

Over the past twenty years, science has revealed the amazing migrations that female sea turtles make after laying their eggs on beaches. Until recently, however, little was known about how male sea turtles live. We used satellite-tracking devices attached to 12 male green turtles (Chelonia mydas) to show that, after the breeding period is over, males tend to migrate shorter distances from the breeding site compared to females (400 km versus 1000 km). Our findings provide new insight into the way sea turtles live and can have important implications for their protection in the wild.

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Journal/
conference: Biology Letters

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Instituto Universitário de Ciências Psicológicas, Sociais e da Vida, Portugal

Funder: This study was funded by the MAVA Foundation through the projects ‘Consolidation of sea turtle conservation at the Bijagós Archipelago, Guinea-Bissau’ and ‘Tortue d’Arguin’; the Regional Partnership for Coastal and Marine Conservation (PRCM), through the project ‘Survies des Tortues Marines’; the ‘La Caixa’ Foundation (ID 100010434) through a fellowship awarded to A.R.P. (LCF/BQ/ PR20/11770003); the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, through a grant (UIDB/04292/2020 and UIDP/04292/2020) awarded to MARE and the project LA/P/0069/2020 granted to the Associate Laboratory ARNET.

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