Abstract
Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) swim from foraging grounds along the Brazilian coast to Ascension Island to nest, over 2200 km distant in the middle of the equatorial Atlantic. To test the hypothesis that turtles use wind-borne cues to locate Ascension Island we found turtles that had just completed nesting and then moved three individuals 50 km northwest (downwind) of the island and three individuals 50 km southeast (upwind). Their subsequent movements were tracked by satellite. Turtles released downwind returned to Ascension Island within 1, 2 and 4 days, respectively. By contrast, those released upwind had far more difficulty in relocating Ascension Island, two eventually returning after 10 and 27 days and the third heading back to Brazil after failing to find its way back to the island. These findings strongly support the hypothesis that wind-borne cues are used by turtles to locate Ascension Island.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (184.9 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Alerstam Thomas. Animal behaviour: The lobster navigators. Nature. 2003 Jan 2;421(6918):27–28. doi: 10.1038/421027a. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Boles Larry C., Lohmann Kenneth J. True navigation and magnetic maps in spiny lobsters. Nature. 2003 Jan 2;421(6918):60–63. doi: 10.1038/nature01226. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Koch A. L., Carr A., Ehrenfeld D. W. The problem of open-sea navigation: the migration of the green turtle to ascension island. J Theor Biol. 1969 Jan;22(1):163–179. doi: 10.1016/0022-5193(69)90085-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Lohmann K. J., Cain S. D., Dodge S. A., Lohmann C. M. Regional magnetic fields as navigational markers for sea turtles. Science. 2001 Oct 12;294(5541):364–366. doi: 10.1126/science.1064557. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Papi F., Luschi P., Akesson S., Capogrossi S., Hays G. C. Open-sea migration of magnetically disturbed sea turtles. J Exp Biol. 2000 Nov;203(Pt 22):3435–3443. doi: 10.1242/jeb.203.22.3435. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]