Research Symposium

BIO

I grew up close to the beach in Coral Springs, Florida. I enjoy learning about marine science as a result of growing up near the sea. However, I want to pursue my interests in ecosystem conservation and restoration.

Habitat selection of juvenile green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the Arabian Gulf

Abstract

Animal habitat selection is an important area of study for making inferences and predictions on the distribution of organisms over geographic and environmental space. Climate change has raised the average temperature of water bodies, such as the Arabian Gulf, forcing marine life such as sea turtles to adapt to the changing conditions or migrate elsewhere to survive. Beyond temperature, there are other variables that characterize the ecological niche of a marine species, such as the amount of available light, depth, proximity to food sources, nutrient concentrations, and more. Although a number of studies have previously investigated the movements of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the rapidly warming Arabian Gulf, none to date have evaluated habitat selection in this species. This study will investigate the effects of temperature, primary productivity, and depth on the distribution of juvenile green sea turtles in the Arabian Gulf. We hypothesize that most turtles will prefer to stay within nearshore shallow waters since these regions provide the dense beds of seagrass or macroalgae that green turtles feed upon. Tracks from 10 satellite tagged juvenile green turtles were processed using a state-space model to account for location error for all relocations. Temperature, depth, and primary production were selected as variables on which to estimate juvenile green turtle distributions since these variables are expected to be highly influential for this species. The habitat selection model will consist of a logistic regression to compare the selection of each used location against a set of available locations throughout their range.

Keywords: Green Turtle Habitat Selection