Weird News About Hot Girl Turtles
Nearly all turtles born on Florida beaches over the past four years have been females. Climate change is to blame, as increasingly warming sand where turtle eggs incubate have churned out a 99% female-to-male ratio over that time.
“The frightening thing is the last four summers in Florida have been the hottest summers on record.” Bette Zirkelbach, manager of the Turtle Hospital in Marathon, Florida Keys, told Reuters. “Scientists that are studying sea turtle hatchlings and eggs have found no boy sea turtles, so only female sea turtles for the past four years.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains temperature-dependent sex determination: “Research shows that if a turtle's eggs incubate below 27.7° Celsius (81.86° Fahrenheit), the turtle hatchlings will be male. If the eggs incubate above 31° Celsius (88.8° Fahrenheit), however, the hatchlings will be female.”
It’s not only turtles. Sex assignment is temp-dependent in many other reptiles as well. “As the Earth experiences climate change, increased temperatures could result in skewed and even lethal incubation conditions, which would impact turtle species and other reptiles.”
The same phenomenon – with the same 99-1 girl-boy ratio – has been observed in the green sea turtles of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and San Diego. And though not as dramatically, feminized populations have been documented of loggerhead turtle populations in West Africa.
An imbalanced sex ratio is natural in sea turtles under normal conditions: female hatchlings of many species outnumber males approximately six to one. But males tend to survive their precarious chelonian childhood more than females do – so the ratio of male-to-female specimens increases as the animals mature.
Marine biologists are not sure exactly what it all means. It certainly seems that the turtle, and perhaps other reptilian, populations are on a doomed path if trends continue.
Photo credit: Maria Andrade via seeturtles.org
