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Nature Watch
Tracking Turtles through Time and Space
| Marine turtles are known to migrate several thousands of kilometres between their feeding and breeding grounds. These migrations have been studied by the application of metal tags on flippers, with intense monitoring at nesting sites, and opportunistic recovery in offshore waters, providing information on turtle movements. Often, several thousands of tags have been applied with very low levels of recapture. Satellite telemetry is a high-tech, and expensive, method to track turtles during their migration across the open ocean. Molecular genetic techniques have offered ways to track turtles both through space and time. The comparison of genetic haplotypes from different regions makes it possible to study population structure, test theories of natal homing, and even assign feeding populations to nesting sites and vice versa. The study of these haplotypes has also made it possible to look at relationships between species and populations, and study evolutionary biogeography or phylogeography of these animals. |
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