Understanding sex ratios across life stages
Sea turtles have temperature dependent sex determination in which warmer temperatures produce females. Climate warming threatens to severely reduce or even eliminate male production. However, the number of males needed to sustain populations is unknown, as few adult males may be sufficent. This project aims to understand differences in the ratio of males to females across life stages in flatback sea turltes to understand how male rarity plays into population dynamics.
** add in Acknowledgement of Country****
Research Highlight
This work is supported by the SeaWorld Foundation Grant
and Australian Wildlife Society Grant
Research Highlight:
This work was featured in the Australian Wildlife Society Spring 2025 Magazine and funds from the society have supported the work.
Genetic effects of male limitation
While few males may maintain population sizes, eventually deacrases in effective popualtion size will lead to deacreases in genetic diversity. If deacreases in genetic diversity lead to deacreases in fitness in temperature senstivie traits, local extinction becomes a real risk. This project will evaluate links between genetic diversity and temperature sensitive traits, such as hatching success, and use current genetic data to evaluate past effective population size, setting a baseline for management.
Research Highlight:
This work is supported by the Margaret Middleton Fund for Endangered Australian Species
