Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Rising Temperature Cause Sea Turtles to Turn Female

Researchers went to the coast of Australia to see how many male and female pacific green sea turtles there was on the coast.  What they found shocked scientist.  They took DNA samples of each turtle they caught.  They found that female turtles outnumbered the males one-hundred and sixteen to one.  The sex of a turtle is determined by the temperature of the sand, in which the eggs are incubated.  Scientist predicted that there would be more females due to climate change, but they never expected females to out number the males one-hundred and sixteen to one.  If the ocean temperatures continues to rise around the world, it can turn the entire turtle population female.  If this continues to happen there might not be enough males to sub stain the population.  Since the only way to determine the sex of turtles is when they fully mature, blood samples were taken of the turtles at a feeding and breeding ground.  In the last twenty years Baine Island has been producing female turtles only.  In the seventies and eighties there was a ration of six to one.  Down south where females out numbered males two to one.  Since males mate with multiple females it makes it more beneficial, in keeping the population.  The temperatures are changing to quickly for the turtles to adapt.

Image result for pacific green turtle

Article:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/australia-green-sea-turtles-turning-female-climate-change-raine-island-sex-temperature/
Related Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/science/female-sea-turtles-global-warming.html

4 comments:

  1. The title of this blog caught my attention at first but after reading I am thoroughly surprised. I did not know that the sex of sea turtles were determined by the temperature of the sand!

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  2. It's crazy to think that females outnumber males by that much. I wonder if the temperature affects the gender of other species as well, and how the turtles are going to survive if there are eventually no more male turtles.

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  3. I’m the type to pull over for turtles on the road, and knowing that climate change is affecting species so much is devastating. How people don’t understand that it is a problem, is baffling, it may be natural for the Earth to go through cycles but not as quickly as it currently is. Something needs to change before more species go extinct because of us.

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  4. This is an effect of climate change that I had not previously considered. I was unaware that sex in turtles is determined by the temperature of the sand. Hopefully, it can be determined how to help this issue before there is such a decrease in the male turtles that reproduction decreases significantly.

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