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Ocean currents, individual movements and genetic structuring of populations

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Abstract

Ocean currents profoundly impact all life in the oceans and over a broad size spectra species may show both horizontal and vertical movements to stay on preferred locations. As a corollary it might be expected that individuals in preferred oceanic habitats may simply drift with flows. We explored these scenarios by both satellite tracking young pelagic loggerhead turtles and examining the genetic structuring of individuals on coastal foraging areas across the Mediterranean in relation to ocean flows measured both with Lagrangian drifters and a numerical ocean circulation model for the area. Both patterns of movement (n = 18 turtles ranging in size from 41.2 to 68.5 cm CCL tracked for up to 460 days) and genetic structuring (n = 165 individuals from six sites across the ocean basin) suggested that ocean flows profoundly impact the movements of immature turtles and suggest a pattern of largely passive drift within an ocean basin that, throughout, is broadly favourable for developing loggerhead turtles. The situation contrasts with more heterogeneous habitats in the Atlantic and Pacific, where larger amounts of directional swimming may be required to avoid sub-optimum areas.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is the result of a stay of LC at the Centre for Integrative Ecology of Deakin University (VIC, Australia). Maps were created using SEATURTLE.ORG’s Maptool (http://www.seaturtle.org/maptool/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Science, Faculty of Biology, Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio), Av. Diagonal 643, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Luis Cardona

  2. School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Warrnambool Campus, PO Box 423, Warrnambool, VIC, 3280, Australia

    Graeme C. Hays

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  1. Luis Cardona
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Correspondence to Luis Cardona.

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Funding

LC had the support of Fundació Bosch i Gimpera, Spain, (Grant 307597).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article is based on previously published data and does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors specifically for this article.

Data accessibility

Data from turtles are in the Dryad repository (http://www.datadryad.org; doi:10.5061/dryad.9hn0m). Data from Lagrangian drifters are available at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/envids/gld/.

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Cardona, L., Hays, G.C. Ocean currents, individual movements and genetic structuring of populations. Mar Biol 165, 10 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-017-3262-2

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