This article is focused on the use of photography to characterize land-cover and land-use changes in a 7.59 km2 study area centered on Hotel do Garbe, in the village of Armação de Pêra, Algarve, Portugal. Orthorectified vertical aerial, oblique aerial and ground-level photographs were the main data sources required to carry out the analysis. In a preliminary approach, a conventional research design was adopted....
Among sea turtles, nest site selection is a crucial factor for hatching success and population viability. The relocation of otherwise doomed clutches to safe hatcheries has been widely promoted as a conservation strategy, although this may promote artificial selection of poorly adapted genotypes. In this study, we used multiyear spatial nesting data of individual loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) from one of...
We assessed the relationship between body size and several important life history parameters to understand the demographic significance of interpopulation variability in the body size of loggerhead turtles Caretta caretta nesting on Boa Vista Island (Cabo Verde). The adult growth rate (0.34 +/- 0.60 cm yr-1), annual mortality rate (0.13, 95% CI: 0.12-0.15) and remigration interval (3.1 +/- 1.2 yr) were independ...
The incidental or target capture of sea turtles by small-scale fisheries (SSF) has been receiving increasing attention in recent years due to its high impact. Here, we evaluated the impact of the SSF on sea turtles in Cabo Verde, which hosts the largest rookery of the endangered Eastern Atlantic loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) population. This is the most comprehensive study evaluating the impact of SSF on ...
Até hoje, uma história detalhada da ocupação e usos do solo no concelho de Loulé começava nos anos de 1950, a partir da publicação da Carta Agrí cola e Florestal de Portugal levada a cabo pelo Serviço de Reconhecimento Agrário do Ministério da Economia. A recente descoberta das ‘Pranchetas Chorographico-Agricolas’, fruto de levantamentos de campo realizados en tre as décadas de 1880 e 1900 e desenhadas à escala...
Among sea turtles, nest site selection is a crucial factor for hatching success and population viability. The relocation of otherwise doomed clutches to safe hatcheries has been widely promoted as a conservation strategy, although this may promote artificial selection of poorly adapted genotypes. In this study, we used multiyear spatial nesting data of individual loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) from one of...
Structural connectivity can be inferred by several landscape metrics that appear to be relevant for characterizing how landscapes constrain or favor the presence and movement of animal species at the level of the regional landscape. Trends of change can be estimated trough spatial time-series analysis. The use of historical maps increases the time span of analysis of the landscape dynamic, relative to the use o...
Sea turtles are globally endangered and facing anthropogenic threats. To mitigate the negative impacts on sea turtle populations, different conservation strategies have been developed and implemented. For instance, when an endangered population suffers a high embryonic mortality from predation, human poaching, beach flooding or erosion, the relocation of clutches to safer and controlled areas can lower these th...
This paper evaluated the efficiency of beach hatcheries as a conservation tool for threatened sea turtle clutches. During six nesting seasons (2013 to 2018), several thousand high-risk clutches from loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) were relocated to a hatchery constructed on the same beach, within the Sea Turtle Natural Reserve (STNR, Boa Vista Island, Cabo Verde). Some parameters like hatching success; inc...
Climate change plays a key role in the development and survival of oviparous ectotherms such as sea turtles. Higher environmental temperatures are expected to lead to increased production of female hatchlings and potential feminization of many populations, as well as reduced hatching success and hatchling fitness. We investigated how different sand temperatures affect sea turtle embryo mortality, hatchling phen...