Posted on 01/08/2018 12:38:15 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Green sea turtles do not develop into males or females due to sex chromosomes, like humans and most other mammals do. Instead, the temperature outside a turtle egg influences the sex of the growing embryo. And this unusual biological quirk, scientists say, endangers their future in a warmer world.
Already, some sea turtle populations are so skewed by heat that the young reptiles are almost entirely female, according to a new report in the journal Current Biology.
“This is one of the most important conservation papers of the decade,” said biologist David Owens, a professor emeritus at the College of Charleston who was not a part of this research. It will not be long, perhaps within a few decades to a century, until “there will not be enough males in sea turtle populations,” he warned.
The sex of a green sea turtle is a result of its environment. “They have temperature-dependent sex determination,” said Camryn Allen, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration endocrinology researcher and co-author of the new study. “It’s not genetics. It’s actually the temperature.”
At what biologists call the pivot temperature, turtles hatch as a mixture of males and females. For green sea turtles, this temperature is 29.3 degrees Celsius (85 Fahrenheit). A few degrees below 29.3 C, all the sea turtles are born male. Heat up the eggs and only females are born.
“That transitional range, from 100 percent males to 100 percent females, spans a very narrow band of only a couple of degrees,” said NOAA marine biologist and study co-author Michael Jensen.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Life finds a way.
You mean its not just a choice for humans?
Ben Guarino has done a lot of swimming and has checked the crotches of all the baby turtles. You can trust his numbers.
So this should tend to increase the number of green sea turtles..........................
“This is one of the most important conservation papers of the decade,”
...again?!
Then shouldn’t this feminist society be happy?
Life finds a way.
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Ha! Perfect!!!! Jeff would be proud of you.
A crapload of does and one buck equals deer everywhere.
Amazing what climate change has done.
We are fortunate that the world has had constant, steady climate for the past 4 1/2 billion years.
Only to have those blasted SUVs change things...in less than one century.
I figger the boys name is Lucky
Baby turtle pink hats.
S9mewhere out in the sea there is a very happy male sea turtle.
I dunno but there’s gonna be a few *really* happy boy turtles.
Who are we to put labels on these sea turtles?
Ah, to be a young male green sea turtle!
Sea turtles - on the documentaries I’ve seen, dig holes over a foot deep in the sand and lay their eggs in there. I don’t remember the exact depth (in inches) where the temperature stays the same, regardless of the surface temp.
Gotta be something to that...I’ll look it up when I have the time.
Unless Lucky is a fag.
So, are they only testing the sex of the turtles who are landing on the shore to lay their eggs? Think about that a minute.
I should apply for a grant to relocate a few nests of green turtle eggs a little north or south.
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