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Sea turtles are not animals as faithful as they thought. They can "betray" their birthplaces and spawning grounds (not always returning to the same thing, as is generally believed), their partners and even their species.
At least two genetic studies on the populations of these reptiles show (UFES) and Rio Grande (FURG), in Rio Grande do Sul.
It is the geneticist Sarah Vargas, of UFES, who created her studying with sea turtles in 2005, when he began his PhD at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
"I have worked with the five species present in Brazil, but mainly in leather turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) and the comb (Eretmochelys imbricata), both threatened with extinction," he says. "I studied samples from Brazil and the Indo-Pacific, but I used published genetic sequences from around the world."
Her most important research began in 2008, when she spent six months in the laboratory of conservationist Nancy FitzSimmons of the University of Canberra. "
" They had already been collected by other researchers working with Nancy on 13 spawning grounds in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, in Saudi Arabia. , Chagos Archipelago, Australia, Solomon Islands, Seychelles, Iran and Malaysia ", says Sarah." Clbad = "img img-responsive image-wide" />
In 2015, as a postdoctoral fellow in the program " Science Without Borders "of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), she returned to Australia for data badysis in Professor Simon Ho's laboratory of"
"It is important to understand turtle migration routes , which can be born in a spawning beach in an ocean, but migrating for thousands of miles and feeding elsewhere. "
Among the discoveries, it is possible that animals from the Indian Ocean arrive in areas of food production in Brazil, such as Fernando de Noronha and Atoll das Rocas." This word, from ancient Greek, means " "love of the house" and defines the behavior, presented by some species of animals, to always return to specific places to feed or procreate.
It was almost a certainty with respect to sea turtles. The results of Sarah's research, however, reversed this dogma. They showed that there was a genetic mix of maternal lineages with distinct origins and that the separation of populations was more complex than previously thought.
This means that they do not always go back and all to the beach where they were born to spawn.
"They may not be 100% faithful to where they were born," says Sarah.
"This is really the only explanation for colonizing other places, otherwise they would all be badociated with a
More recently, in a pioneering work in Brazil, Sarah studied the multiple authorship of sea turtles in the world. [194] Since males are rarely found because they do not leave the oceans, unlike spawning females, most surveys use specimens for badyzes of the biology of the species.
"Therefore, a way to obtain information on men uses the genetic information of women and their respective descendants to infer data such as the size of the male population," says Sarah.
Data not yet published. "But the work suggests that the breeding population of turtle-head turtles (Caretta caretta) on the beach of Povoação, in Linhares district, in the 39 State of Espirito Santo, seems to be composed of about two men for each woman, "says Sarah
" The multiple paternity rate was about 50% , with a contribution of up to three men per nest. "In other words, half of the litters have more than one parent."
The oceanographer Maira Carneiro Proietti, of the FURG Oceanographic Institute, began studying sea turtles. sea one year before Sarah in 2004, still in her third year of studies. "
" Júlia Reisser and I have today created a project to study people living in the Marine Biological Reserve. Arvoredo in Santa Catarina, "she recalls. "I am thrilled with these animals and since then I have been fascinated by them and I continue to search for them."
Since then, Maira has studied several species of different places.
"In my Ph.D., I searched for turtles – roam several areas of the Brazilian coast, including isolated sites such as the São Pedro Archipelago and São Paulo and the National Marine Park. Abrolhos. "
" In my laboratory, we also study turtles and olive turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) on the coast of Rio Grande do Sul, in order to understand their biology and ecology. . "
One of Maira's main research focuses on the genetic characterization of immature populations of several species, with the aim of: understanding the diversity and connectivity that unites them, as well as those living in them in other parts of the world, to help preserve these animals. In addition to verifying and understanding the genetic diversity of populations and places of origin, spawning and feeding, the work yielded a surprising result.
"We have identified young turtles, still young, Maira explains
" Up to now, we have observed animals resulting from hybridization between the turtle and the comb head, the comb and the olive tree. We observed animals resulting from crosses between different species that breed on the Brazilian coast. ", Green and eaten, and wagtail and olive."
According to the researcher, before these revelations, hybrid turtles had been reported than in the spawning grounds. It indicates that young hybrids appear to have characteristic distribution patterns, different from those of adults.
"For example, the results of Cabeçuda crossing with comb turtles were more prevalent in Praia do Cbadino, in the extreme south of Brazil., Which is a known foraging site for the first, but where the latter does not happen fluently, "says Maira.
In general, taking into account all species, not just hybrids, the work of scientist FURG shows that the origins of sea turtles found on the country's coasts are much more diverse than previously thought , with significant contributions also coming from West Africa and the Caribbean, in addition to the island of Trindade in Brazil.
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