New publication: Habitat fidelity in hawksbill sea turtles

Two post-nesting migrations for an individual hawksbill sea turtle, separated by 5 years, demonstrate precise habitat fidelity, even after migrations of >1,500 km.

Adult sea turtles are generally assumed to live and forage within the same “home ranges” for long durations—if not their whole adult lives—only leaving to make periodic breeding migrations. This assumption is quite difficult to empirically test, though. In a new collaborative article available open access in Ecology, my coauthors and I used “repeat satellite tracking” of nesting females to test just that assumption. That is, we tracked each of 17 hawksbills multiple times to assess whether individuals used the same habitats repeatedly. Our results show remarkably fine-scale fidelity, confirming assumptions with flying colors. Read the article for more. A big shout out to the collaborative team that made this possible, representing hawksbill research across Brazil, Barbados, and Antigua.