- Title
- Impact of marine heatwaves for sea turtle nest temperatures
- Creator
- Hays, Graeme C.; Chivers, William J.; Laloë, Jacques-Olivier; Sheppard, Charles; Esteban, Nicole
- Relation
- Biology letters Vol. 17, Issue 5, no. 20210038
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0038
- Publisher
- The Royal Society Publishing
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- There are major concerns about the ecological impact of extreme weather events. In the oceans, marine heatwaves (MHWs) are an increasing threat causing, for example, recent devastation to coral reefs around the world. We show that these impacts extend to adjacent terrestrial systems and could negatively affect the breeding of endangered species. We demonstrate that during an MHW that resulted in major coral bleaching and mortality in a large, remote marine protected area, anomalously warm temperatures also occurred on sea turtle nesting beaches. Granger causality testing showed that variations in sea surface temperature strongly influenced sand temperatures on beaches. We estimate that the warm conditions on both coral reefs and sandy beaches during the MHW were unprecedented in the last 70 years. Model predictions suggest that the most extreme female-biased hatchling sex ratio and the lowest hatchling survival in nests in the last 70 years both occurred during the heatwave. Our work shows that predicted increases in the frequency and intensity of MHWs will likely have growing impacts on sea turtle nesting beaches as well as other terrestrial coastal environments.
- Subject
- Chagos Archipelago; Granger causality testing; climate change; temperature-dependent sex determination; Hadley SST; SDG 14; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1432558
- Identifier
- uon:39071
- Identifier
- ISSN:1744-957X
- Rights
- © 2021 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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Goal 14: Life Below Water
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