RESEARCH
Marine Ecology • Conservation Genetics • Anthropomorphic Impacts • Management
See below for examples of ongoing projects.
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 sufficient. This project aims to understand differences in the ratio of males to females across life stages in flatback sea turtles to understand how male rarity plays into population dynamics and species persistence.
Genetic Effects of Male Limitation
While a small number of males may be sufficient to maintain population sizes under climate change, prolonged male limitation is expected to reduce effective population size and, consequently, genetic diversity. If losses in genetic diversity reduce fitness in temperature-sensitive traits, local extinction may become a significant risk. This project will investigate relationships between genetic diversity and temperature-sensitive traits, such as hatchling locomotor performance, and use contemporary genetic data to infer historical effective population size, providing an important baseline for future management.