The operational tool combined a neural-network-based model for predicting water temperature with supplemental air-temperature forecasts. The water-temperature model was initialized in 2007 and operationalized in 2010. The simulation also included deterministic National Weather Service air-temperature guidance and a 100-member probabilistic air-temperature ensemble displayed as 10th-to-90th-percentile fan plots. Participants reviewed predictions presented seven days before the simulated event, four days before, one day before and one day after its onset. They thought aloud while assessing the likelihood of water temperatures crossing 8°C, the threshold associated with severe hypothermic stunning in green sea turtles, and 4.5°C, a secondary threshold relevant to fish-kill assessment. Their numerical likelihood ratings supported the qualitative interview exercise and were not analyzed as quantitative outcomes.

Seven days before onset, natural-resource managers and coastal economic operators concentrated on the deterministic water-temperature predictions because cold-stunning decisions concern the temperature experienced by wildlife in the water. The five-day water forecast had not yet crossed the relevant turtle threshold, so these participants generally judged the immediate risk to be low. Weather forecasters took a broader view, using the longer-range probabilistic air-temperature forecast to judge whether a future cold-stunning event was plausible and to expand their situational awareness. One forecaster said the ensemble’s lower percentiles were far below the thresholds, while another noted that the 10-day ensemble extended beyond the National Weather Service forecast. Some users also questioned what a week-long air forecast could reveal, reflecting their concern about wider uncertainty at longer lead times.

Four days before the simulated onset, the forecasts began showing threshold exceedance and more agreement among systems. Participants’ questions shifted from whether an event might occur to when it would begin, how long it could last and how cold conditions might become. Natural-resource managers and coastal economic operators continued to use deterministic water-temperature trends as the main basis for action, but they also examined probabilistic air temperatures for possible best- and worst-case outcomes. Although the water-temperature system did not provide uncertainty estimates, participants recognized uncertainty in its deterministic output. Familiarity with the tool and with the model developers helped them decide which decisions could be made while waiting for greater confidence, such as positioning resources locally without committing to more extensive travel.

Trust was generally high at this stage, but it was not identical across participants. Natural-resource managers and coastal economic operators connected trust to the model’s performance during previous events, its agreement with observations and familiar patterns of cold-stunning development. Forecasters were more deliberative, comparing the water-temperature prediction with National Weather Service guidance, the probabilistic ensemble and their meteorological expertise. Agreement among those sources strengthened confidence; unexplained discrepancies prompted scrutiny. Limited familiarity with the commercial probabilistic air-temperature system also produced hesitation. One forecaster requested a probabilistic ensemble of water temperatures, which participants regarded as more relevant than air-temperature uncertainty because it would directly represent variability in the variable used to trigger response.

One day before onset, every participant interpreted the information as warning of an imminent threat. The water-temperature forecast indicated the projected beginning and end of a turtle cold-stunning event, while narrower air-temperature uncertainty ranges suggested a short-lived event of roughly 24 to 48 hours. Participants began activating turtle response, coordinating searches and rescue, assessing possible fisheries closures and discussing pauses in coastal activity. Uncertainty about the minimum temperature did not prevent action, but it influenced its scale: the information was sufficient to activate wildlife response and increase monitoring, yet not necessarily to impose the more consequential fisheries closure. Forecasters who noticed a sharp observed air-temperature decline not fully captured by either air-temperature forecast suspected a warm bias and considered the water-temperature forecast potentially too warm as well.

Once the event was underway, observed air and water temperatures fell below both decision-relevant thresholds, making conditions more severe than most participants had anticipated. Some natural-resource managers and coastal economic operators treated the cold miss as consistent with uncertainty they had already recognized, noting that the forecasts had correctly warned of a threshold crossing and provided useful advance notice. Their attention turned to how long search, rescue and operational suspensions should continue. Most extended their estimate of the event’s end by about 12 to 36 hours. This involved a cross-domain balancing act: natural-resource managers weighed continued exposure of wildlife and responders against disruption to barge operators and supply chains, while coastal economic operators considered the delayed recovery of stunned turtles and the financial cost of prolonged inactivity.

Trust in the predictive information remained high across all domains once the event was underway, although the basis for that trust differed among users. Natural-resource managers and coastal economic operators generally maintained their earlier confidence in the broader system, while several forecasters reported greater trust than before as the air-temperature uncertainty range narrowed and the probabilistic and National Weather Service forecasts agreed more closely. The colder observed conditions did not produce an abrupt rejection of the tool. Instead, participants continued to compare observations with predictions, revise estimates of the event’s duration and consider how the guidance should inform recovery operations. Some remained cautious about longer-range features, including a second decline in the air-temperature forecast, and requested an explanation from technical experts before relying on those features for decisions about when to end responses or resume coastal activity.

The findings indicate that a technically accurate forecast may still be difficult to use if it does not align with users’ responsibilities, timelines or information needs. The study’s small purposive sample consisted of established users drawn from roughly 150 active collaborative members, and the proportions across the three operational domains roughly reflected membership, so the results should not be generalized to people outside the collaborative or to unfamiliar users. Nevertheless, the interviews show that trust in this machine-learning tool was conditional and developed through repeated use, observation of past performance, relationships with the modeling team and comparison with other forecasts. The authors recommend continued stakeholder engagement throughout development, evaluation and operation, including probabilistic forecasts tied directly to water temperature and sustained communication between model developers and decision-makers. Their evidence supports iterative, user-centered design, not a claim that any single added feature will automatically produce trust or improve environmental outcomes.

Subject of Research: Qualitative study of how Texas cold-stunning decision-makers interpret and trust machine-learning temperature forecasts

Article Title: How decision-makers trust and use machine learning predictions for managing cold-stunning risks

Article References: White, M. C., Wirz, C. D., Cains, M. G., Flores, E. R., Demuth, J. L., & Tissot, P. E. (2026). How decision-makers trust and use machine learning predictions for managing cold-stunning risks. Frontiers in Communication, 11, Article 1816041. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2026.1816041

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2026.1816041

Keywords: machine learning, cold-stunning risk, Texas coast, forecast trust, decision-making, water temperature, uncertainty, risk communication, collaborative management, sea turtles, weather forecasting, qualitative interviews

Entanglement in fishing gear, plastic materials or synthetic raffia was the leading reason for admission, accounting for 42.8% of first admissions. Unknown or undetermined causes ranked second at 21.5%, followed by other causes at 13% and infectious disease at 9.6%. Among 457 turtles that arrived dead, 63.9% had an unknown cause of death and 18.6% were classified as entanglement-related. The researchers attributed part of the large unknown category to decomposition, limited diagnostic resources and major advances in diagnostic tools over the four decades, while noting that retrospective classification could not be independently checked for agreement among clinicians. Infectious disease was recorded only when a pathogenic microorganism was demonstrated through microbiological testing, polymerase chain reaction or histopathological examination, rather than from presumptive clinical diagnoses alone.

The two species differed in the reasons they reached the centre. Loggerheads had significantly greater odds of admission because of entanglement than green turtles, with an odds ratio of 9.7 and a 95% confidence interval of 3.5 to 26.9. Green turtles, represented by a much smaller sample, had greater odds of hook or monofilament ingestion and vessel-collision trauma. The study did not formally compare rehabilitation outcomes between the species because only 34 green turtles were alive at first admission, leaving several cause-specific categories with too few animals for reliable statistical testing. Among loggerheads for which measurements were available, 76.1% were classified as pelagic juveniles, compared with 89.3% of measured green turtles. Straight carapace length was missing for 51.6% of all turtles, however, and body weight and carapace length were available together for only 1,000 animals, limiting life-stage and body-condition analyses.

Initial condition was strongly associated with final disposition. Among all 1,813 turtles alive at first admission, the euthanasia rate was 1.4%, the unassisted mortality rate during hospitalisation was 12.5% and the release rate was 86%. Entanglement cases had a 90.2% release rate and an 8.4% unassisted mortality rate. By contrast, unassisted mortality reached 26.6% for hook or monofilament ingestion, 28.1% for vessel trauma and 24.3% for infectious disease; corresponding release rates were 71.1%, 63.2% and 75.2%. All 42 turtles admitted after crude-oil exposure were released. Cause was significantly associated with both unassisted mortality and release, with moderate effect sizes quantified by Cramér’s V of 0.22 and 0.23, respectively. These cause-specific associations remained largely unchanged in sensitivity analyses that included admission period, although they do not establish that the cause of injury itself produced the different outcomes.

Treatment duration also varied markedly. Among released turtles, median rehabilitation lasted 10 days for crude-oil exposure, 23 days for entanglement, 21 days for hook or monofilament ingestion, 22 days for infectious disease and 37 days for trauma. The 90th percentile for trauma reached 213 days, showing that although many collision cases had relatively short rehabilitation periods, a small group required prolonged hospitalisation. Median time to unassisted death ranged from two days for trauma to 11 days for entanglement. The researchers described these figures as descriptive benchmarks rather than adjusted estimates of the independent effects of age, injury severity or other clinical variables. They also noted that release, unassisted death and euthanasia are mutually exclusive outcomes, meaning conventional survival analysis would not directly estimate their observed cumulative incidence without an approach designed to account for competing outcomes.

Post-release readmission was uncommon, but the finding requires caution because a turtle can be returned to the centre only if its injury is noticed and its identity is recognised. Sixteen of the 1,560 turtles released after their first admission were later readmitted, a proportion of 1.0%, generating 22 readmission events. Buoyancy disorder and infectious disease were the most frequent causes of readmission, each accounting for 27.3% of events, and 63.6% involved a cause different from that of the preceding admission. Two turtles were dead on their first readmission, while all 20 readmission events involving animals admitted alive ended in another release. The interval from release to readmission ranged from zero to 1,425 days, with a median of 24.5 days. The readmission data therefore measure recorded returns to the centre, not post-release survival in the wider population.

The study’s standardised economic analysis estimated rehabilitation costs per turtle of €1,498.4 for crude-oil cases, €1,634.4 for other causes, €1,732.3 for entanglement, €1,905.5 for infectious disease, €1,905.8 for unknown or undetermined causes, €2,128.6 for hook or monofilament ingestion and €2,358.1 for trauma. Fixed costs accounted for €974 per animal, admission-related costs for another €250 and the remainder for feeding, diagnostics and treatment. Feeding was estimated at €1.84 per turtle per day, making differences in hospitalisation length less influential than expected. Diagnostic and therapeutic procedures were the main source of variation between causes, particularly for trauma and hook ingestion. Fixed costs represented 41.3% to 65% of the total depending on the case category, illustrating how admission volume affects cost comparisons. These were estimates based on current centre prices, median stay for each cause and assumed treatment frequencies, not reconstructions of historical expenditure or universal values for other facilities.

Taken together, the findings provide a framework built around three core measures: the rate of euthanasia, the rate of unassisted death during hospitalisation and the rate of release, each calculated for turtles alive on admission and stratified by the primary cause. The analysis adds benchmarks for time to final disposition, post-release readmission and standardised costs. It is among the largest and longest-running evaluations of sea turtle rehabilitation, covering 43 years and eight months, but it remains a single-centre observational study conducted at a multidisciplinary facility that treats many wildlife species. Missing morphometric data, changes in diagnostic capacity over time, sparse green-turtle cases and limited post-release surveillance restrict generalisation. The results offer reference values and a reproducible framework rather than proof that every centre with similar overall release performance delivers equivalent care.

The results also connect rehabilitation data to the visible threats facing sea turtles around Tenerife. Entanglement was both the most common reason for admission and the second most common recorded cause among turtles dead on arrival, while vessel-related trauma accounted for 28.1% of unassisted deaths during hospitalisation among turtles admitted alive. The authors argue that the epidemiological patterns can help managers identify preventable hazards and plan resources, but they emphasize that rehabilitation has additional roles that these clinical and economic indicators cannot capture, including disease surveillance, public education, professional training and scientific research. For conservation policy, the central message is that many stranded turtles recovered at the centre: among those alive at first admission, most were released, and subsequent readmissions were both infrequent and generally successful.

Subject of Research: Long-term retrospective evaluation of sea turtle rehabilitation outcomes, readmissions and costs at a wildlife rehabilitation centre in Tenerife, Spain

Article Title: Benchmark indicators for evaluating sea turtle rehabilitation outcomes at a wildlife rehabilitation center on Tenerife island, Spain (1982–2025)

Article References: Trujillo-Camejo, F., Montesdeoca, N., Capelli, S., Méndez-Corona, C. D., & Orós, J. (2026). Benchmark indicators for evaluating sea turtle rehabilitation outcomes at a wildlife rehabilitation center on Tenerife island, Spain (1982–2025). Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 13, Article 1948954. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2026.1948954

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2026.1948954

Keywords: sea turtles, wildlife rehabilitation, rehabilitation outcomes, loggerhead turtles, green turtles, entanglement, vessel trauma, post-release readmission, rehabilitation costs, Tenerife, Benchmark, indicators

The observations form part of a broader ecological setting in which jaguars prey on sea turtles near nesting beaches and leave carcasses that other animals can exploit. Santa Rosa National Park lies within the Área de Conservación Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica. The surrounding landscape is a recovering lowland seasonal dry forest with highly seasonal rainfall: monthly averages range from almost no rain to 1,040 millimeters, with the wet season generally extending from May through November. The dry season runs from December through April and can include temperatures above 37 degrees Celsius. White-tailed deer are common in the park, and nearby Naranjo and Nancite beaches are regularly used by jaguars to kill olive ridley and green sea turtles that nest locally on a year-round but seasonal basis.

The camera used for this analysis was positioned near a mangrove zone at Tule Beach, 1.1 kilometers northwest of Nancite Beach, in an area known for concentrations of sea turtle carcasses that were the remains of jaguar kills. It was one of an array of cameras designed to maximize photo captures of jaguars and their prey across an area of approximately 100 square kilometers. To quantify osteophagia, the researchers defined separate photo events as those recorded at least 30 minutes apart. This procedure yielded 463 independent records involving white-tailed deer, of which 183 showed the animals chewing sea turtle bones. The total comprised 81 records of females, 77 of males and 25 of fawns.

The researchers used visible physical characteristics and comparisons of body size to divide the deer into sex and age categories. A full-sized animal was classified as an adult male when genitalia or antlers were visible. Male antlers were divided into three stages: nubs with visible pedicels, velvet antlers that were growing and had rounded tine ends, and hard antlers that were fully formed. Adults without observable antlers or genitalia were classified as females and separated into those recorded alone and those accompanied by fawns. Fawns were distinguished by body size and grouped as spotted or non-spotted. These classifications allowed the analysis to compare monthly frequencies among animals at different reproductive and developmental stages.

Monthly variation was assessed with a chi-square test. The frequency of bone-chewing records did not differ significantly by month for adult males with antler nubs, for which the reported p value was 0.53, or for spotted fawns, for which it was 0.64. Adult females showed clearer peaks. Solitary females had their highest monthly frequency in July, with a p value of 0.02, while females accompanied by fawns also reached their maximum in July, when 12 independent records were recorded; the latter group had a p value below 0.01. These results describe the distribution of photographed events in the camera dataset rather than direct measures of feeding by a marked population of deer.

Stronger seasonal patterns appeared among males in stages of antler development associated with greater mineral demands. Males with hard antlers recorded six bone-chewing events in June, five in July and seven in August, with a p value below 0.01. Males with velvet antlers recorded nine events in each of June, July and August, also with a p value below 0.01. Non-spotted fawns showed a comparable concentration, with six records in July and seven in August and a p value below 0.01. By contrast, the absence of significant monthly variation among males with nubs and spotted fawns indicates that their photographed feeding did not follow the same June-to-August pattern detected in the other categories.

Osteophagia is the chewing of antlers or bones by ungulates. Previous reports have associated this behavior with mineral-deficient environments, particularly where available food supplies limited calcium or phosphorus. The study interprets the seasonal pattern among females with fawns as consistent with the nutritional demands of lactation at the beginning of the park’s wet season and as a possible means of recovering condition after gestation. The timing among non-spotted fawns may likewise be associated with their growth after weaning. For males with velvet antlers, the increase in bone chewing coincided with the growth stage before antler mineralization, when physiological requirements for calcium and phosphorus rise. These are interpretations of the observed timing; the camera records did not directly measure the diets, mineral status or physiological responses of individual deer.

The wider dry-forest environment provides a plausible seasonal context for these patterns. During long rainless periods, vegetation changes and the availability of foods varies, requiring animals to cope with shifts in resources. White-tailed deer in northwestern Costa Rica are thought to gain nutritional condition during the wet season and to produce fawns near the beginning of the dry season, when some new leaf production occurs. Fallen fruit is also available during the dry season, while evergreen vegetation remains present throughout the year. The combination of reproductive stage and the changing mineral composition of vegetation may therefore contribute to seasonal osteophagy in both sexes, although the study did not measure vegetation chemistry or directly test that relationship.

Mineral acquisition through bone consumption may matter because calcium, sodium and phosphorus are involved in bone construction, nerve impulses, the contraction and relaxation of blood vessels, and the control of enzymes associated with blood clotting. Deficiencies of minerals in ungulates can be associated with weight loss, reduced growth, malformed bones, reduced appetite and decreased plasma volume. Earlier studies have linked bone chewing in cervids with lactation, the later growth of fawns, the end of gestation, seasonal changes in plant minerals and successful antler development. The new observations do not demonstrate that the turtles’ bones improved deer health, but they provide a detailed account of when particular categories of deer fed on the carcasses and are consistent with these established nutritional and reproductive associations.

Beyond deer nutrition, the findings illustrate how a top predator can make marine biomass available to terrestrial consumers. Jaguars killed the turtles and left their remains on beaches, where white-tailed deer and other organisms could feed on them. The authors describe this pathway as a cascade effect in which jaguar predation creates a resource used by multiple terrestrial species. The evidence comes from a single camera at one beach over January through September 2017, however, and does not establish how many individual deer participated, how much bone each animal consumed, or whether comparable behavior occurs at other beaches or in other seasons. Within those limits, 183 independent records document a repeated feeding relationship between white-tailed deer and jaguar-killed sea turtles at a nesting site in Santa Rosa National Park.

Subject of Research: Camera-trap documentation of sea turtle bone consumption by white-tailed deer at a Costa Rican nesting beach

Article Title: Osteophagia of sea turtle bones by white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ) in Santa Rosa National Park, northwestern Costa Rica

Article References: Morera, B., Montalvo, V., Sáenz-Bolaños, C., Cruz-Díaz, J. C., Fuller, T. K., & Carrillo, E. (2022). Osteophagia of sea turtle bones by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in Santa Rosa National Park, northwestern Costa Rica. Neotropical Biology and Conservation, 17(2), 143-149. https://doi.org/10.3897/neotropical.17.e87274

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/neotropical.17.e87274

Keywords: white-tailed deer, osteophagia, sea turtles, jaguars, camera traps, Costa Rica, Santa Rosa National Park, bone chewing, animal nutrition, turtle nesting beaches, seasonal behavior, ecological cascades

The specimens examined in this study are housed at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels and originate from the Lutetian stage of the middle Eocene. The first individual is the holotype of Eochelone brabantica, discovered in Saint-Remy-Geest in the Walloon Brabant region, while the second is a carapace of Puppigerus camperi found in Zaventem in the Flemish Brabant Province. Both fossils were recovered from the Brussels Sand Formation, a marine stratigraphic unit that has been correlated with the calcareous nannofossil NP14 biozone. This geological context places the animals in a littoral environment, where they would have been exposed to a variety of predators, parasites, and physical hazards typical of shallow marine habitats.

The analysis of the Eochelone brabantica shell revealed multiple erosive anomalies on its costal plates, two of which showed clear signs of bone remodelling. This remodelling is a critical indicator that the turtle was alive when the damage occurred, as the body’s healing response creates new bone tissue around the injury. The most prominent mark, located on the left first costal plate, is an amorphous penetrative lesion measuring approximately 4.5 centimeters in length and 2.5 centimeters in width. It features smooth margins and an asymmetric ridge-shaped bone growth on the inner surface, suggesting a significant healing process. Another distinct mark on the left second costal plate is a circular hole about 1.7 centimeters in diameter, which penetrates through the external cortex and into the cancellous bone, accompanied by a polished osseous growth on the inner side.

To further characterize these anomalies, researchers utilized computerized axial tomography (CT) scanning to generate cross-sectional images of the shell plates. The CT scans revealed the internal morphology of the lesions, showing hyperdense bone regions indicative of newly formed tissue during the healing process. In the case of the circular erosion, the images displayed a subcircular shape with a relatively flattened base. The variations in bone density observed in the scans suggest different stages of healing, with some areas showing more advanced restoration of physical and mechanical properties. This detailed imaging allowed the researchers to confirm that the bone growth was a biological response to the injury rather than a post-mortem alteration.

Based on the size, morphology, and distribution of the marks, the study attributes the erosions on the Eochelone brabantica shell to the activity of epibiotic organisms, specifically barnacles. Barnacles are known to attach to the shells of marine turtles, and their anchoring structures can penetrate the bone, causing lesions that range from shallow pits to deep holes. The smooth internal surfaces and well-defined but irregular margins of the fossil marks are consistent with the damage caused by barnacle attachment. The presence of both small pits and deep perforations suggests that the turtle hosted barnacles at various stages of development, with the larger lesions likely resulting from mature organisms that had sufficient time to grow and cause significant stress to the host.

The second specimen, Puppigerus camperi, exhibits a different set of shell alterations, including a healed fracture and abnormal erosion in the posterior region of the carapace. The healed fracture extends from the left ninth peripheral plate toward the center of the shell, resulting in the partial loss of several plates. The smooth and irregular contour of the fracture indicates that the turtle survived the initial trauma and underwent a healing process. The study suggests that this injury was likely caused by some form of physical trauma, such as a collision or a predator attack, although the absence of specific tooth marks or mechanical deformations makes it difficult to pinpoint the exact cause. The fact that the fracture did not involve the spinal column suggests that the injury was not immediately fatal, allowing the turtle to continue its life and heal the damage.

In addition to the healed fracture, the Puppigerus camperi carapace displays several superficial marks, including pits and linear grooves scattered across the surface. These marks do not penetrate the external cortical bone layer and are therefore not associated with bone remodelling, making it difficult to determine whether they were inflicted during the turtle’s lifetime or after death. The pits, measuring approximately 0.2 centimeters in diameter, are consistent with the activity of small invasive barnacles or post-mortem invertebrate activity. The linear grooves, which are about 2.5 centimeters long and 0.5 centimeters wide, have a U-shaped profile and smooth contours, characteristics often associated with organic processes during the postmortem interval, such as solution marks made by plants or microorganisms.

The study highlights the importance of distinguishing between premortem and post-mortem shell modifications in paleontological research. By using the presence of bone remodelling as a criterion, researchers can more accurately identify the types of interactions that occurred in ancient marine ecosystems. The findings from this study provide valuable insights into the health and behaviour of Eocene sea turtles, as well as the nature of their relationships with other organisms. The ability to identify specific agents, such as barnacles, responsible for shell damage enhances our understanding of the ecological dynamics that shaped these ancient environments.

Furthermore, the detailed examination of these fossils contributes to the broader field of paleopathology, which seeks to understand disease and injury in extinct organisms. The combination of macroscopic observation, CT scanning, and 3D surface scanning offers a powerful toolkit for analyzing fossil remains and uncovering the history of life on Earth. The results of this study demonstrate that even in the fossil record, subtle details can reveal significant information about the biology and ecology of ancient animals. As researchers continue to develop new techniques for analyzing fossils, the potential to reconstruct past ecosystems and understand the evolution of marine life will only continue to grow.

In conclusion, the analysis of bioerosional marks on the shells of Eochelone brabantica and Puppigerus camperi provides a compelling case study in the interactions between ancient marine organisms and their environment. The evidence of barnacle attachment and traumatic injury offers a window into the challenges faced by sea turtles in the middle Eocene, highlighting the complexity of their ecological niche. This study not only advances our knowledge of these specific taxa but also contributes to the broader understanding of bioerosion and its role in shaping the fossil record. By integrating multiple analytical methods, researchers have been able to provide a nuanced interpretation of the shell anomalies, offering a clearer picture of life in the ancient seas of Belgium.

Subject of Research: Bioerosional marks and paleopathology in middle Eocene sea turtle fossils from Belgium

Article Title: Bioerosional marks in the shells of two sea turtle taxa from the middle Eocene of Belgium

Article References: Guerrero, A., Smith, T., & Pérez-García, A. (2025). Bioerosional marks in the shells of two sea turtle taxa from the middle Eocene of Belgium. Fossil Record, 28(1), 45-56. https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.28.141743

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/fr.28.141743

Keywords: sea turtles, Eocene fossils, bioerosion, paleopathology, barnacles, marine ecology, Belgium, CT scanning, shell damage, ancient marine environments, Bioerosional, marks

A new editorial published in Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science brings together four studies spanning continents and life stages to tackle some of the most pressing research gaps in this field. The findings fall into two broad themes: thermal physiology and behavioral responses on one hand, and stress physiology and contaminant exposure on the other. Together, they reveal that herpetofauna responses to urbanization and climatic change are rarely uniform, cautioning against broad generalizations and reinforcing the need for multispecies, multiparameter approaches.

In one study, researchers investigated the thermal physiology of the Mysore day gecko (Cnemaspis mysoriensis) in the major metropolitan city of Bengaluru, India. They found that human-made microhabitats had slightly higher and more variable environmental temperatures than natural microhabitats, but the geckos did not exhibit significant shifts in their thermal physiology. Instead, they relied on behavioral thermoregulation to maintain body temperatures within their preferred range. This highlights the importance of retaining natural microhabitats in urban landscapes, as the temperature range of natural microhabitats closely matches the thermal range of these species.

In a second study, researchers examined the physiological and behavioral responses of the Gulf Coast toad (Incilius nebulifer), an urban exploiter, to urbanization and climate variation. Interestingly, populations in the warmest and least urbanized sites exhibited the highest locomotor performance, suggesting that the energetic costs of living in urban areas might have a nuanced relationship with the thermal tolerance of the species. These two studies demonstrate that multiple stressors must be studied together to accurately predict population outcomes.

The same Gulf Coast toad research also revealed that populations in more urbanized sites showed elevated baseline and stress-induced corticosterone release rates, faster negative feedback recovery, and higher lipid storage. Climate, on the other hand, had a non-linear relationship with these traits, with populations at both thermal extremes showing reduced corticosterone and lipid levels. The rate of glucocorticoid recovery following stress increased with urbanization but decreased with temperature, consistent with the on-again, off-again hypothesis of glucocorticoid regulation, whereby efficient post-stress recovery enables organisms to mount repeated stress responses without chronic physiological costs.

A third study explored the hormonal and behavioral responses of young common toads (Bufo bufo) to artificial light at night and noise pollution. This work marked a shift from population-level responses to measuring individual consistencies in phenotypic traits. The researchers found that while corticosterone profiles changed during ontogeny, individual consistency in stress responses was low. Interestingly, foraging rates increased under both light and noise pollution, but these behavioral changes were not correlated with stress hormone levels. This decoupling suggests that phenotypic plasticity, rather than individual variation in the stress axis, may enable common toads to tolerate urban stressors during early life.

A fourth study examined a distinct but equally critical axis of anthropogenic threat: chemical contamination. Researchers investigated heavy metal accumulation in olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) at two mass nesting rookeries in India. As long-lived, wide-ranging reptiles occupying higher trophic positions, sea turtles are particularly susceptible to bioaccumulation of heavy metals across multiple life stages. By measuring the concentrations of nine heavy metals in adults, in utero and oviposited eggs, hatchlings, and nesting beach sand, the team showed that contaminants move across both maternal and environmental pathways. Heavy metals in in utero eggs provided direct evidence of maternal transfer, while correlations between sand and hatchling metal concentrations suggested environmental exposure. This multistage design highlights how industrial and agricultural pollution can affect sea turtles across life stages.

Taken together, the studies show that species differ in their responses through physiological adjustment, behavioral flexibility, or a combination of both. The Mysore day gecko primarily relies on behavioral adjustments while maintaining relatively conserved physiology. In contrast, the Gulf Coast toad shows population-level variation in glucocorticoid dynamics, whereas the common toad displays flexible behavior that is largely independent of hormonal state. This diversity cautions against generalizations and reinforces the need for multispecies, multiparameter approaches. Multiple stressors frequently co-occur and interact with thermal changes, sensory pollution, and chemical contamination, yet they are mostly studied individually.

The life-stage dependency of responses, illustrated both by ontogenetic shifts in corticosterone profiles in common toads and by maternal contaminant transfer in olive ridley sea turtles, highlights that vulnerability assessments must span the full life cycle. Future research should prioritize the simultaneous measurement of multiple physiological traits across environmental gradients. Geographically diverse datasets on herpetofaunal communities, spanning tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions, are particularly needed, given that the majority of global amphibian and reptile diversity occurs in regions that are disproportionately underrepresented in physiological research. Ultimately, insights from this collection of studies will help guide conservation interventions that consider the complex and interacting pressures now facing herpetofauna worldwide.

Subject of Research: Editorial: Effects of urbanization and climate change on the physiology of amphibians and reptiles

Article Title: Editorial: Effects of urbanization and climate change on the physiology of amphibians and reptiles

Article References: Batabyal, A., & Dissanayake, D. (2026). Editorial: Effects of urbanization and climate change on the physiology of amphibians and reptiles. Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science, 4, Article 1873581. https://doi.org/10.3389/famrs.2026.1873581

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/famrs.2026.1873581

Keywords: amphibians, reptiles, urbanization, climate change, thermal physiology, corticosterone, artificial light at night, heavy metals, sea turtles, ectotherms, behavioral thermoregulation, conservation

Fibropapillomatosis is among the most consequential infectious diseases affecting marine turtles globally. It strikes green turtles most often, although cases have been documented in all sea turtle species, and its external tumors can grow around the eyes, neck, and flippers, impairing vision, movement, and feeding so severely that animals may starve or drown. The precise cause of the disease has never been fully resolved. Decades of research point to Scutavirus chelonidalpha5 as a key player, but the emergence and prevalence of fibropapillomatosis appear to be shaped by environmental conditions as well, particularly degraded water quality, eutrophication, and nutrient enrichment in coastal habitats.

Crucially, infection with the virus does not automatically mean illness. Numerous studies have found viral DNA in turtles that appear completely healthy, supporting the view that fibropapillomatosis is a multifactorial disease in which viral presence, host immunity, and environmental stressors interact to trigger tumor growth. This subtlety is what makes the Singapore findings so revealing: the virus was present not only in tumored animals but also in every apparently healthy individual sampled, suggesting that subclinical infections may be common in both species in the region.

The study began with two stranded green turtles found floating near East Coast Park and Lazarus Island in 2021 and 2022, both carrying multiple large external lesions on the neck and flippers. Internal examination revealed extensive pulmonary tumors that compromised lung integrity and buoyancy. Because veterinary diagnostic records were unavailable, the researchers classified the lesions based on gross morphology alone and describe them as suggestive of fibropapillomatosis rather than definitively diagnosed. The team then widened the net, analyzing whole-genome sequencing datasets from a total of four green turtles and four hawksbill turtles stranded or nesting in Singapore between 2020 and 2022, including individuals both with and without visible tumors.

The sequencing strategy was technically elegant. The team constructed Illumina TruSeq Nano paired-end libraries and sequenced them to roughly thirty-fold genome coverage on the HiSeq X platform. Because the viral genome is tiny, around 170 kilobases, compared with the roughly 2.1 gigabase turtle genome, viral sequences were expected to make up only a vanishingly small fraction of each dataset. To pull this signal out, the researchers used two complementary pipelines. The first, a reference-based approach using the BWA-MEM algorithm, aligned all quality-filtered reads against the reference viral genome, then filtered the results with SAMtools to retain only primary mapped read pairs. The second used Kraken2 metagenomic classification: host reads were subtracted, and the remaining reads were queried against the RefSeq viral database to count matches to the genus Scutavirus.

Both approaches told the same story. Viral sequences turned up in all eight genome datasets. After normalizing read counts to the smallest library size of roughly 223.8 million reads, reference-based viral counts ranged from about 30,869 to 98,326 reads, with the highest abundance found in a tumored green turtle from Lazarus Island. Kraken2 counts, between 178 and 488 normalized reads, mirrored the same pattern, and a Spearman’s rank correlation between the two methods was significant, indicating that the independent pipelines were capturing the same underlying viral signal. The concordance gives strong confidence that the detections are real rather than artifacts of any single analytical approach.

Perhaps the most striking result was what the statistics did not show. There was no significant difference in viral load between turtles with tumors and turtles without, and while green turtles carried somewhat higher counts than hawksbills, that difference also fell just short of significance with the small sample size. All four hawksbill turtles, none of which had visible tumors, still harbored detectable viral sequences. The authors caution that the sample sizes are small and unbalanced, and one green turtle muscle sample was excluded from statistical analysis because post-mortem contamination produced an unreliable taxonomic profile. Even so, the pattern is consistent with studies elsewhere showing that visual surveys based on tumors alone likely underestimate true infection rates.

That finding matters for conservation because turtles without symptoms may act as cryptic carriers, quietly maintaining the virus within populations. Viral infection can remain latent, and loads may drop below detection thresholds depending on tissue type, infection stage, and species, further limiting the reliability of external examinations. The researchers argue that host whole-genome sequencing, by enabling unbiased viral detection in both sick and healthy animals, offers a sensitive complement to existing viral, histological, and environmental DNA monitoring methods. Combined approaches of this kind could catch infections long before tumors appear.

Singapore’s urban coastline makes the discovery especially poignant. Land reclamation, urban runoff, and pollution have drastically altered the island nation’s natural shores, and pollution is known to weaken immune function in marine organisms, potentially raising susceptibility to diseases like fibropapillomatosis. Globally, higher disease prevalence has been linked to eutrophic, polluted coastal habitats. The study’s authors are careful to note that environmental parameters were not measured in this work, so no direct link between pollution and viral presence can be drawn from the data. Still, the hypothesis that heavily impacted coastal ecosystems elevate disease risk fits the emerging picture that fibropapillomatosis reflects an interaction among viral exposure, host immune status, microbiome composition, and environmental stress rather than pathogen presence alone.

There are also broader geographic implications. Southeast Asia has long been a surveillance gap for this disease. The earliest known regional record dates to 1958, when fibropapillomatosis was reported in nesting green turtles at Malaysia’s Sarawak Turtle Islands, and subsequent studies have documented cases in Indonesia and Taiwan along with molecular evidence of the virus in green, hawksbill, and olive ridley turtles in Borneo. The Singapore data now fill in a missing piece of that map in one of the most heavily urbanized marine environments on Earth. The team calls for comprehensive health assessments across Singapore and the wider region, integrating water quality and pollutant monitoring with molecular and clinical surveillance, alongside more systematic sampling across species, life stages, and tissue types, and histopathological confirmation of lesions in future work. If the virus proves to be a sentinel of cumulative environmental stress, then tracking it genomics-first could benefit not just the turtles but the ecosystems they inhabit.

Subject of Research: Detection of Scutavirus chelonidalpha5, the virus linked to fibropapillomatosis, in green and hawksbill turtles from Singapore using host whole-genome sequencing

Article Title: Host whole-genome sequencing reveals Scutavirus chelonidalpha5 infection in sea turtles from Singapore

Article References: Tanabe, L. K., Espinosa, A. G., Tiong, R. H. Y., & Kim, H. L. (2026). Host whole-genome sequencing reveals Scutavirus chelonidalpha5 infection in sea turtles from Singapore. Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science, 4, Article 1814588. https://doi.org/10.3389/famrs.2026.1814588

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/famrs.2026.1814588

Keywords: sea turtles, Scutavirus chelonidalpha5, fibropapillomatosis, herpesvirus, whole-genome sequencing, metagenomics, Singapore, green turtle, hawksbill turtle, marine conservation, urbanization, wildlife disease

The reason this single record matters so much lies in a stubborn asymmetry of sea turtle biology. Nesting females are, in a sense, the easiest turtles in the world to study. They haul themselves onto beaches in predictable numbers, dig conspicuous nests, and obligingly present themselves to teams of researchers who count, measure, and tag them season after season. Males never come ashore. Once hatchlings reach the sea, male sea turtles may not touch land again for decades, remaining fully aquatic and eluding the beach-based monitoring programs that have generated nearly everything science knows about sea turtle demography. As a result, adult males are among the least studied segments of any sea turtle population, and basic questions about where they live, how long they stay near breeding grounds, how often they return to mate, and how many reproductively active males are available in a given season remain largely unanswered, especially for hawksbills in the Caribbean.

Those questions are not academic curiosities. The number and availability of reproductively active males during a breeding season determine what ecologists call the operational sex ratio, a measure of the ratio of fertilizable females to sexually active males in a population. The operational sex ratio shapes mating competition, influences reproductive success, and feeds directly into estimates of population viability. Male behavior also underpins gene flow and patterns of multiple paternity, which have been documented in marine turtles through genetic studies showing that females may mate with several males across a season. If males are scarce, or if they visit breeding areas only intermittently, the reproductive output of a rookery could be affected in ways that female-focused nesting counts would never reveal. Understanding males is therefore essential to managing populations, particularly in key regions such the Caribbean Sea, where the hawksbill, a critically endangered species, still nests on scattered beaches.

The Gulf of Paria is exactly the kind of place where such knowledge is needed. Its hawksbill rookery ranks as the second largest for the species in the southern Caribbean Sea, yet it has shown worrying nesting declines in earlier assessments, raising questions about the population’s long-term prospects. Venezuelan sea turtle research has historically concentrated on nesting females, whether leatherbacks on the Paria Peninsula, green turtles at Aves Island, or the hawksbills of the Gulf of Paria itself. In-water research, the approach that can actually reach males, has been almost entirely absent from the country; the only comparable neritic study to date focused on hawksbill habitat in Los Roques Archipelago National Park. Against that backdrop, a team led by Clemente Balladares of Universidad Central de Venezuela, together with Marco Garcia-Cruz, José Alio, and Hector Barrios-Garrido, set out in April 2023 to gather whatever preliminary data they could on adult male hawksbills near the rookery, publishing their findings in Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science.

Their method combined two deliberately separate sampling streams. The first was researcher-led: stationary net hauls conducted roughly every two weeks off Los Garzos Bay, adjacent to the main nesting beach. Each net, measuring 100 meters long by 10 meters deep with a fine 15-centimeter mesh, was set perpendicular to the coastline about 50 meters offshore in water 4 to 12 meters deep, and each two-hour haul began after sunrise, between 5 and 7 in the morning. Of 40 planned hauls, 33 were completed between April 2023 and November 2024, with the rest cancelled by rough seas or drifting Sargassum mats, yielding 60 hours of effective sampling effort. The second stream was fishery-dependent: from September 2023 to June 2025, trained local assistants validated reports from artisanal fishers landing their catch near Aricagua Bay, Calera, and the Las Garcitas Islets, recording species, measurements, photographs, gear type, tag numbers, and the condition of any turtles caught incidentally. The two datasets were never pooled, because their designs, effort levels, and detection probabilities differ too much to support combined analyses of abundance or residency.

Every captured turtle was brought aboard, disentangled, measured for curved carapace length and width, checked for injuries and buoyancy problems, and kept shaded and wet to minimize stress. Sexing an adult male relies on a visible anatomical signal: the tail of a mature male grows long enough to extend well beyond the rear edge of the carapace, a secondary sexual characteristic absent in females and juveniles. Turtles without tags received new Inconel tags on both front flippers, and photographs of carapace, head, and tags were taken before release to support future photo-identification. The research-led surveys captured nine turtles in total, six juvenile green turtles, one adult male green turtle, and two adult male hawksbills, for a capture rate of 0.15 turtles per hour. Meanwhile, the validated fishery records documented 15 incidental captures involving three gear types: stationary nets, single hooks, and a 250-meter longline, with stationary nets accounting for most reports.

The headline result came from one of those two male hawksbills. Tagged as V001M and V002M on 26 June 2023 in Los Garzos Bay, with a curved carapace length of 75 centimeters and width of 64 centimeters, he was recaptured on 22 June 2025 near the Las Garcitas Islets after becoming entangled in an artisanal longline. By then only one of his original tags remained, but tag V001M was enough to confirm his identity; he received two new tags and was released in good condition, his measurements essentially unchanged and his elongated tail again confirming his status as an adult male. Crucially, the recapture date fell at the peak of the nesting season, and the research team had also repeatedly observed solitary hawksbills and small groups of up to four individuals surfacing and engaging in courtship and mating near the Las Garcitas Islets during their surveys. Together, these observations provide the first preliminary evidence that adult male hawksbills occur in the Los Garzos Bay–Las Garcitas area during the breeding period, close to the rookery they would presumably serve.

The authors are careful, however, about what this record does and does not prove. A single recapture, however evocative, cannot demonstrate continuous residency, seasonal site fidelity, remigration periodicity, local male abundance, or reproductive connectivity between the males and the nesting females of the rookery. The fishery-dependent reports are opportunistic and subject to unknown reporting bias, so they document interactions rather than distribution. Two competing hypotheses now frame the next phase of work: either some adult males return repeatedly to the area across successive breeding seasons, or they appear only in breeding years separated by one or more skipped seasons, which would also produce a multi-year gap between sightings. Both possibilities echo questions better studied in male green and loggerhead turtles, whose breeding periodicity and breeding-area fidelity have been examined in places like the southern Great Barrier Reef. Environmental context may matter too: the Gulf of Paria’s anticyclonic circulation could help retain turtles locally, while seasonal productivity peaks during the June-to-November rainy season may shape the availability of the sponges and other benthic prey that hawksbills favor. A separate, remarkable record adds regional texture: a hawksbill originally tagged in Puerto Rico was recovered in Los Garzos Bay some 1,200 kilometers away, showing that at least some turtles using the gulf participate in much broader regional movements.

Turning to the future, the team argues that these findings justify neither immediate fishery closures nor the formal designation of the area as confirmed male habitat. Instead, they position the Las Garcitas Islets–Los Garzos Bay zone as a candidate site for targeted monitoring and participatory risk assessment with local fishers. Because the focal male was recaptured in fishing gear, the priority actions are practical: strengthening fisher reporting networks, promoting safe handling and release protocols, training crews, systematically documenting gear interactions, and encouraging photographic records of every capture. The researchers also lay out the technical toolkit needed to move from anecdote to evidence: satellite telemetry to trace male movements and residence times, multi-season mark–recapture programs to estimate abundance and fidelity, photo-identification to track individuals non-invasively, and genetic analyses to test whether the males near Las Garcitas actually fertilize clutches on the adjacent nesting beaches. Funding from the New England Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund, the International Sea Turtle Society, and Conservation Connect supported the work, and the collaboration of Macuro’s fishing communities proved indispensable at every step.

For now, one turtle’s two-year journey of barely two kilometers stands as a small, hard-won data point in a vast gap of knowledge. But its implications ripple outward. If male hawksbills gather near rookeries during breeding seasons, then the waters adjacent to nesting beaches, precisely the zones where artisanal fisheries operate, may be critical habitat that current conservation frameworks, built almost entirely around beaches and nesting females, simply do not see. Every additional recapture, every validated fisher report, and every satellite track from the Gulf of Paria will help determine whether the Gulf’s males are loyal residents of these shallow waters or intermittent visitors from distant foraging grounds, and whether protecting them requires seasonal measures negotiated with the very fishers whose nets and lines keep bringing these ghostly males back into view.

Subject of Research: First local flipper-tag recapture of an adult male hawksbill turtle near the Gulf of Paria rookery in Venezuela

Article Title: First local flipper-tag recapture of a male hawksbill turtle near a major rookery in the Gulf of Paria, Venezuela

Article References: Balladares, C., Garcia-Cruz, M., Alio, J., & Barrios-Garrido, H. (2026). First local flipper-tag recapture of a male hawksbill turtle near a major rookery in the Gulf of Paria, Venezuela. Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science, 4, Article 1818436. https://doi.org/10.3389/famrs.2026.1818436

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/famrs.2026.1818436

Keywords: hawksbill turtle, sea turtles, male sea turtle ecology, mark-recapture, Gulf of Paria, Venezuela, operational sex ratio, artisanal fisheries, bycatch, rookery, Caribbean, conservation

The research team, led by Nupur Kale of Swansea University and colleagues, combined two very different ways of watching turtles. Since 2017, foot patrols had walked the sandy pocket beaches of Frégate Island each day of the nesting season, from October through March, tagging every nesting female with titanium flipper tags and recording the location of each clutch. Then, during the peak of the 2023–2024 season, the team fitted ten adult hawksbills with Fastloc-GPS Argos satellite tags at Grand Anse beach, a 300-metre strip of sand framed by rocky headlands. The tags recorded haul-out events—periods when a turtle came ashore for at least twenty minutes—along with GPS positions accurate to within tens of metres, allowing the researchers to reconstruct exactly where and when each female nested after tagging.

The technical detail matters here, because distinguishing a genuine nesting event from other landfalls requires careful filtering. The team used three converging lines of evidence: haul-out records, GPS locations on land, and the elapsed time between haul-outs, which they checked against the known inter-nesting interval for the region of roughly twelve to seventeen days. From 1,552 filtered GPS locations, they established that the mean inter-nesting interval of their tagged turtles was 13.8 days. Seven of the ten turtles renested on Frégate Island or nearby, while one migrated straight to her foraging grounds. Two females made especially striking journeys: one travelled 27.3 kilometres north to Marianne Island, and another moved 19 kilometres to Ile aux Récifs, each laying multiple clutches at their new island destinations.

The headline result was a near-even split in behavioural strategies. Four of the tagged turtles proved study-beach faithful, returning repeatedly to Grand Anse. Five were study-beach unfaithful, switching to Marina beach, Anse Parc, Anse Victorin, or islands beyond Frégate altogether. Of the nineteen clutches laid after tagging, only 37 percent fell within 300 metres of the first nest. In other words, the majority of eggs produced by these females were deposited somewhere other than the beach where scientists were watching—a mismatch with far-reaching consequences for the numbers that emerge from monitoring programmes.

Those consequences became stark when the team compared clutch frequency estimates. From eight seasons of foot patrol data covering 575 individual turtles, the mean estimated clutch frequency was 1.9 clutches per female per season. From satellite telemetry, the same parameter came out at 3.7 clutches—nearly double. The discrepancy arises because foot patrols can only count what happens on the beaches they cover; clutches laid on other islands or on inaccessible stretches of coast simply vanish from the record. Similar gaps between patrol-based and telemetry-based estimates have previously surfaced in Florida, at Ascension Island, and in Brazil, suggesting the problem is systemic rather than local.

The bias propagates directly into abundance estimates, which conservation managers rely on to assess population status. Using a standard equation that converts clutch counts into the number of adult females, the researchers modelled how estimates change as the assumed proportion of clutches laid elsewhere increases. With 198 clutches observed on Grand Anse in 2023–2024, assuming all clutches were laid there and a clutch frequency of 1.9 yields roughly 260 adult females. But if 60 percent of clutches were laid on other beaches—as the telemetry suggested—the same data imply 651 females using the beach at least occasionally, a 2.5-fold difference. The pattern held across every clutch-frequency scenario tested, demonstrating that fidelity assumptions distort abundance estimates independently of how clutch frequency itself is measured.

Historical records support the idea that turtles seen only once on a beach are fundamentally different from repeat visitors. In a classic study from Greece more than thirty years ago, loggerheads seen nesting multiple times in a season had an 80 percent chance of returning in later years, whereas single-observation turtles had just a 13 percent chance. The Seychelles data echo this: 91 percent of flipper-tagged females that laid more than one clutch on Grand Anse in 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 remigrated, compared with only 56 percent of those recorded laying a single clutch. The new conceptual framework proposed by the authors distinguishes beach tenacious individuals, which nest exclusively on one beach, from beach flexible individuals, which spread their clutches across multiple sites within and between seasons. Whether a turtle appears faithful to a monitored beach depends on how large that beach is relative to the animal’s true range of fidelity.

To test how widespread this flexibility is, the team reviewed 51 studies published between 1971 and 2026 covering five sea turtle species at 43 nesting beaches worldwide. Study-beach unfaithful behaviour was documented in loggerheads most often, at 25.6 percent of individuals, followed by leatherbacks at 14.5 percent, green turtles at 9.3 percent, hawksbills at 7.9 percent, and olive ridleys at 6.3 percent. The method used shaped the detection rate dramatically: genetic analysis flagged unfaithful individuals in 46 percent of cases, satellite tracking in 19.4 percent, and flipper tagging in just 14.7 percent. Geography mattered too. Mainland sites recorded unfaithful turtles at rates 2.4 times higher than island sites, and 3.2 times higher than oceanic islands specifically. The most extreme movements were staggering: a green turtle was recorded nesting at sites 2,250 kilometres apart, a leatherback 1,849 kilometres apart, and a loggerhead 725 kilometres apart.

Why the island–mainland divide? The authors suggest geomorphology plays a central role. Mainland coastlines offer long, contiguous stretches of suitable nesting habitat with few physical barriers, so females may be less selective and drift between neighbouring beaches. Islands, by contrast, present small, isolated patches of sand, which may intensify selection for precise natal homing—perhaps enabling navigation to a discrete target more reliably than along a continuous shore. Yet even among islands, habitat stability appears to modulate the strategy. At Jumby Bay in Antigua, where beaches are sheltered and stable, generations of hawksbills have returned to a single kilometre of sand with remarkable tenacity. Grand Anse, by contrast, suffers seasonal erosion during the nesting season, and the authors suggest this unpredictability may push a higher proportion of females toward flexibility. At nearby Cousin Island, where beaches are longer and more stable, foot patrols alone yielded a clutch frequency of 3.6 clutches—close to the telemetry-derived figure at Frégate—hinting that fidelity is a plastic trait shaped by local conditions rather than a fixed species characteristic.

The evolutionary and conservation stakes are considerable. Beach tenacity pays dividends when conditions are stable: familiarity with a site’s thermal regime, predator landscape, and access routes can translate into consistent reproductive success. But fidelity can become an ecological trap when conditions deteriorate, a phenomenon documented in Baltic eiders whose loyalty to breeding sites reduced adult survival as eagle predation intensified. For sea turtles facing accelerating erosion and inundation from sea level rise, rigid homing could be a liability. Beach flexible females, by spreading clutches across sites, effectively hedge their bets against localised disturbance, much as poison frogs distribute tadpoles among multiple pools to reduce the risk of desiccation. A population containing both strategies may thus maintain output in good times while retaining the adaptive capacity to colonise new habitat as old beaches vanish. The practical message for managers is equally clear: single-site monitoring systematically underestimates clutch frequency and can misstate adult female abundance, potentially distorting the Red List and Regional Management Unit assessments that guide conservation priorities. Quantifying true fidelity will require sharing resighting data across regional programmes and, wherever possible, pairing traditional patrols with satellite telemetry—a combination that is finally revealing just how restless these supposedly loyal navigators really are.

Subject of Research: Nesting beach fidelity strategies in hawksbill sea turtles revealed by satellite tracking

Article Title: Sea Turtle Nesting Beach Fidelity Revealed by Satellite Tracking

Article References: Kale, N., Hays, G. C., Mortimer, J. A., Zora, A., Stokes, K. L., & Esteban, N. (2026). Sea Turtle Nesting Beach Fidelity Revealed by Satellite Tracking. Ecology and Evolution, 16(10), Article e74341. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.74341

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/ece3.74341

Keywords: sea turtles, hawksbill turtle, satellite tracking, nesting beach fidelity, site fidelity, Seychelles, clutch frequency, population monitoring, conservation, climate change, ecological trap, Fastloc-GPS

The geographical setting is central to the story. Great Swan Island, roughly one by three kilometers with a maximum elevation of about 19 meters, and its rugged sister, Little Swan Island, separated by a channel only about 200 meters wide, together cover just 3.6 square kilometers. Today they host a small rotating Honduran naval garrison and no permanent civilian residents. But the archival record reveals layers of human presence stretching back at least to the seventeenth century. Shell middens containing burned top shells and crude pottery, reported by visitors in the 1930s, hint at possible pre-contact Indigenous visits, though the islands’ isolation and lack of permanent freshwater may have kept any occupation minimal. Christopher Columbus’s crew appears to have been the first European party to encounter the islands in July 1502 during his fourth voyage, and buccaneers including Henry Morgan and Captain Charles Swan—from whom the islands take their English name—used Great Swan Island as a staging base in the mid-to-late 1600s.

The authors conclude that from the pre-contact period through the early seventeenth century, the islands likely remained in a natural or near-natural state. In their pristine condition, the Swan Islands were probably completely cloaked in Caribbean coastal lowland dry forest, so dense that the naturalist Percy Lowe wrote in 1908 that trees came right down to the sea, allowing a visitor to step in five yards from the blinding glare of the beach into the gloom of the woods. Enormous seabird colonies of boobies, frigatebirds, and terns deposited the vast phosphate guano reserves that would later attract industrial exploitation. Green, hawksbill, and loggerhead turtles nested on the beaches in numbers unimaginable today, green iguanas were reportedly tame and abundant, and the reefs supported large predators including goliath groupers, sharks, snappers, and jacks, along with the grazing sea urchin Diadema antillarum and plentiful queen conch.

The pivotal rupture came in the 1850s. In 1857, phosphate-rich guano estimated at more than three million tons, yielding 40 to 80 percent bone phosphate of lime, was reported on the islands, triggering United States claims under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. From 1858, the Atlantic and Pacific Guano Company began clearing native forest on Great Swan Island to excavate the deposits, shipping the guano to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where it was blended with menhaden waste into fertilizer. At the operation’s peak in 1887, some 300 men worked the island, supported by a settlement of laborer housing, drying sheds, and a small railroad from the diggings to a western pier. Mining continued under various companies until 1904, leaving pits that persist today as ephemeral ponds. The deforestation almost certainly increased soil erosion and sediment runoff into nearshore waters, initiating a slow chain of marine degradation that would unfold over the following century and a half.

The human and biological toll compounded rapidly. Goats introduced from Grand Cayman grazed down native vegetation, and ships servicing the guano trade and later enterprises delivered rats, mice, and feral cats—predators that devastated seabird colonies, reptiles, and invertebrates. Commercial turtle hunting on an industrial scale was underway by the 1880s; an 1884 Baltimore Sun report described a superintendent freeing more than 300 turtles from holding pens because no vessels had come to buy them. That same article contains what appears to be the first published record of the Swan Island hutia, Geocapromys thoracatus, a small rodent found nowhere else on Earth. After mining ended, leaseholders and the United Fruit Company cleared more forest for a 7,500-tree coconut plantation, fruit crops, and tobacco, while a wireless telegraph station, a US Weather Bureau hurricane station, and later a cattle quarantine station and CIA radio facilities further reshaped the landscape. By 1908, Lowe recorded seabirds nesting only on Little Swan Island, the rookeries of Great Swan having evidently already been extirpated.

The twentieth century catalogued a cascade of extinctions. The endemic whiptail lizard Ameiva fuliginosa, collected in 1887, vanished by 1912, apparently a casualty of cat predation. The islands’ remarkable land snail fauna—23 described species, at least nine endemic—was abundant as late as 1937 but apparently collapsed completely soon afterward, most likely under sustained rat predation. The Swan Island hutia, abundant on Little Swan Island into the early 1950s, went extinct by 1960, a demise researchers attribute to feral cat predation compounded by the catastrophic Category 5 Hurricane Janet in 1955, whose deluge likely drowned animals sheltering in limestone crevices. The endemic Little Swan Island racer snake Cubophis brooksi has not been reliably seen since the late 1990s. Only the green iguanas persisted in force; a 2024 survey estimated 18,000 to 20,000 animals on Great Swan Island, though unlike the tame populations Lowe described, they now flee humans, an apparent behavioral legacy of decades of hunting.

The marine story follows a parallel, delayed trajectory. As late as 2000, the reefs surrounding the islands were still reported as reasonably healthy, with large predatory fish and four shark species present—remarkably late by Caribbean standards, where reef decline generally began decades earlier. Yet the archival synthesis reveals that between 2007 and 2011/13, the reefs underwent a dramatic phase shift. The first quantitative surveys, conducted in 2011 and 2013, found most coral reduced to rubble, with average live coral cover of only about 13 percent in 2011 and 10 percent in 2013, while macroalgae blanketed roughly a third of the reef surface. Predatory fish and sharks had become very rare. Surveys in 2024 showed little recovery, with live coral dominated by weedy, disturbance-tolerant species such as Siderastrea siderea and Porites astreoides, and only three small, bleaching colonies of staghorn coral remaining.

The researchers identify a convergence of stressors that likely pushed the reefs past a tipping point after 2007. These include more than a century and a half of land-use change and sedimentation; the collapse of seabird populations, which historically transported marine-derived nutrients from ocean to island and back into nearshore waters, boosting reef productivity and resilience; the loss of nesting sea turtles, which function as ecosystem engineers grazing seagrass and consuming reef sponges; sustained overfishing of herbivorous and predatory fish; the regional spread of white-band disease; the catastrophic 1983–84 mass mortality of the grazing urchin Diadema antillarum, which removed up to 85 to 90 percent of Caribbean populations; the arrival of invasive lionfish in the early 2000s; and warming-driven coral bleaching. Critically, NOAA hurricane records show that four intense Category 4 and 5 storms—Mitch in 1998, Iris in 2001, Wilma in 2005, and Dean in 2007—struck within a nine-year window, with return intervals of three, four, and less than two years, far too short for reefs already weakened by chronic stress to recover.

The study’s implications extend beyond historical curiosity. The Swan Islands sit within one of the Caribbean’s largest marine protected areas, declared a national marine park in 1991 and encompassing roughly 5,672 square kilometers of ocean, yet the reserve remains largely unmanaged. The authors argue that historical ecological knowledge is essential both for dispelling the persistent myth that the islands are pristine—as recent tourism and promotional materials still claim—and for setting realistic restoration benchmarks. They advocate a holistic ridge-to-reef strategy, noting that coral restoration efforts are likely to fail unless paired with terrestrial management, invasive species control, and the recovery of seabird and turtle populations that sustain land-sea nutrient connections. Recent development proposals, including a planned maximum-security prison on Great Swan Island that was cancelled in 2023 amid financial and environmental concerns, underscore the stakes. The Swan Islands, the authors conclude, now stand as a powerful model system for understanding how remoteness delays but does not prevent ecological collapse, and for designing restoration strategies grounded in the deep history of what these islands once were.

Subject of Research: Long-term anthropogenic ecological change on the Swan Islands in the western Caribbean

Article Title: Historical ecology of the Swan Islands (Islas del Cisne) chronicles long-term anthropogenic changes in the Western Caribbean

Article References: Mladenov, P. V., & Fitzpatrick, S. M. (2026). Historical ecology of the Swan Islands (Islas del Cisne) chronicles long-term anthropogenic changes in the Western Caribbean. Discover Ecology, 2(1), Article 23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44396-026-00036-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44396-026-00036-x

Keywords: Swan Islands, historical ecology, coral reefs, invasive species, guano mining, seabirds, sea turtles, hurricanes, Caribbean, biodiversity loss, island restoration, Honduras