Record Nesting of Sea Turtles

InGeNi-Caretta, a new project funded by Fundación Biodiversidad will contribute to generating the scientific knowledge needed to understand why this colonization is occurring and to facilitate decision-making in the planning and management of this endangered species.

This recent phenomenon is quite possibly caused by the warming temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea and the sand on its beaches due to climate change, a hypothesis that InGeNi-Caretta hopes to contribute to proving. This increase is modifying the nesting area of the loggerhead turtle, leading it to nest in grounds where it had apparently not done so before, calling for new biodiversity management challenges in these territories.

The project encompasses several actions. It will enable a detailed study to be carried out on the potential suitability of Spanish coastal beaches for nesting sea turtles, considering their physico-chemical characteristics and better defining the environmental parameters on nesting beaches. Moreover, it will make it possible to analyze the number, origin and behavior of breeding individuals through genomic studies of the nests, as well as their biological efficiency, the number of eggs, the rate of embryonic development and the viability of the hatchlings. Finally, by combining all the data obtained, it will also be possible to assess the impact of brood genotype on dispersal, viability and growth.

InGeNi-Caretta is supported by the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) in the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.

Participating institutions: