Global Habitat Suitability

Abstract

Aim: To understand whether climate limits current sea turtle nesting distributions and shapes the ecological niche of the terrestrial life history stage of these wide-ranging marine vertebrates.

Methods: I predicted the spatial distributions of nesting habitat under current climatic conditions for seven sea turtle species using information criteria and Maximum entropy modelling. I also compared niche similarity among species using three niche metrics: I, Schoener’s D, and relative rank.

Results: Sea turtles currently nest across their entire bioclimatic envelopes, with up to six species predicted to nest on a single beach. The Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Australasia support high nesting diversity, with most regional areas supporting three to five species. Despite large overlap in nesting distributions among species, loggerhead and green turtles have the broadest environmental niches, while Kemp’s ridley and flatback turtles have very narrow niches.

Main conclusions: The terrestrial nesting habitat of sea turtles is characterized by distinct climatic conditions, which are linked to the physical conditions necessary for eggs to hatch successfully and allow hatchlings to disperse from natal areas. Despite broad geographic patterns of overlap and similar embryonic tolerances to temperature and moisture among species, sea turtles partition habitat by nesting in different niche space. The tight link between current geographic patterns of nesting and climate, along with the dependence of developing embryos on nest microclimate, imply that regional or global changes in environmental conditions could differentially influence the distribution of sea turtle species under climate change. This could influence the adaptive potential of different populations, and predicted these responses before they occur will be important in mitigating the effects of climate change.

Legend

Color	Habitat quality metrics
	marginal
	moderate
	good
	excellent

Citations

Pike, D.A. (2013), Sea turtle nesting distributions. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 22: 555-566. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12025

A PDF of the cited paper is included in the zipped file of the downloaded shapefiles.