Regional Management Units (RMUs) are geographically explicit population segments based on geographic boundaries to distributions derived from studies on genetics, tag returns, satellite telemetry, and other data. RMUs were meant to encompass multiple nesting sites, mtDNA-defined nesting populations, and nDNA-defined breeding populations to reflect shared geographic distribution among conspecific marine turtles in the same region. Thus, RMUs do not represent complete geographic distributions of species on global or regional scales, but rather distributions that are anchored to landmasses by known nesting site(s) and/or genetic stock origins and defined by biogeographical information.
These RMUs were generated using the citations listed below and refined by regional experts. In cases where an RMU spans an ocean basin, the sites anchoring the RMU can be determined by the name of the RMU, e.g. the West Atlantic RMUs are anchored by sites on the east coast of North and South America and the Wider Caribbean. For a full list of attributes associated with each RMU please download the associated metadata. If you have information that could improve or refine these distributions, please use the feedback button to provide as much of this information as possible. Any suggested changes must be accompanied by relevant citations to be accepted and incorporated. Feedback will be reviewed and used to update these distributions periodically.
Full citations are available in an EndNote library.
The library is also included in the zipped file of the layer shapefiles.