Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Salmon, Michael

Abstract

Few studies on marine turtles focus on the variation in reproductive performance of individual females. I use a long-term nesting data set (1986 – 2018) of individual loggerheads including information on 1,854 individuals, of which 853 were seen nesting multiple times. During this time, emergence success has declined while the number of females nesting, and the number of nests deposited has increased. Declining emergence success can be linked to an increase in predation in most recent years; however, this does not fully explain the decline in emergence success over all years. Females were found to vary in productivity. Successful females were larger and deposited more eggs in nests. This study shows that an increasing in nesting numbers does not mean that productivity is increasing proportionally and that recovery efforts are uniformly successful. This study is also a powerful tool for understanding the reproductive strategies of individual female loggerheads.

Extent

95 p.

Comments

Includes bibliography.|Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.

Identifier

FA00013381

Format

pdf

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