Webster, Emily, Duce, Stephanie, Hamann, Mark, Murray, Nicholas, Shimada, Takahiro, and Limpus, Colin (2024) Should I stay or should I go? The influence of environmental conditions on green turtle residence time and outward transit in foraging areas. Marine Biology, 171. 144.

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Abstract

Foraging animals move through the environment to satisfy their requirements for food, rest, reproduction and risk-avoidance. Understanding how animals respond to changing environmental conditions can help to characterise favourable habitat and determine whether they might be motivated to depart when those habitats become unsuitable. Foraging green turtles are typically residents that scarcely move in response to environmental changes or disturbances. Some individuals though, exhibit high mobility at fine scales. We developed an analysis of Fastloc GPS tracks of 61 green turtles using cox regression models and generalised linear mixed models to investigate the influence of a suite of environmental characteristics on the length of residence time and probability of turtles transitioning between two behavioural modes, “stay” or “go”. Decisions to move (“go”) were influenced by short-term changes in the local environmental conditions. Individuals were more likely to “stay” when temperature increased during their stay and were more likely to “go” when turbidity decreased, and they entered deeper habitats. This result implies that foraging and resting (“staying”) primarily occurs in benthic, shallow, warm habitats, while transit (“going”) is facilitated in deeper, clear water. We also determined that individuals within the green turtle foraging aggregation respond differently to environmental cues to move and hypothesise that a diversity of strategies within a foraging aggregation could confer its resilience to disturbance events. Our study provides new evidence of the factors influencing movements in green turtles and can aid in predicting how they may respond to future changes and enhance risk mitigation efforts through dynamic and adaptive planning.

Item ID:	83060
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1432-1793
Copyright Information:	Open Access.This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Research Data:	https://research.jcu.edu.au/data/default/rdmp/record/view/ff41354026be11efba67b591b3714429
Date Deposited:	08 Jul 2024 23:14
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 50% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310301 Behavioural ecology @ 50%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 34% 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280111 Expanding knowledge in the environmental sciences @ 33% 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1802 Coastal and estuarine systems and management > 180299 Coastal and estuarine systems and management not elsewhere classified @ 33%
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