Ecological regime shift drives declining growth rates of sea turtles throughout the West Atlantic.

Somatic growth is an integrated, individual-based response to environmental conditions, especially in ectotherms. Growth dynamics of large, mobile animals are particularly useful as bio-indicators of environmental change at regional scales. We assembled growth rate data from throughout the West Atlantic for green turtles, Chelonia mydas, which are long-lived, highly migratory, primarily herbivorous mega-consumers that may migrate over hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Our dataset, the largest ever compiled for sea turtles, has 9690 growth increments from 30 sites from Bermuda to Uruguay from 1973 to 2015. Using generalized additive mixed models, we evaluated covariates that could affect growth rates; body size, diet, and year have significant effects on growth. Growth increases in early years until 1999, then declines by 26% to 2015. The temporal (year) effect is of particular interest because two carnivorous species of sea turtles-hawksbills, Eretmochelys imbricata, and loggerheads, Caretta caretta-exhibited similar significant declines in growth rates starting in 1997 in the West Atlantic, based on previous studies. These synchronous declines in productivity among three sea turtle species across a trophic spectrum provide strong evidence that an ecological regime shift (ERS) in the Atlantic is driving growth dynamics. The ERS resulted from a synergy of the 1997/1998 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-the strongest on record-combined with an unprecedented warming rate over the last two to three decades. Further support is provided by the strong correlations between annualized mean growth rates of green turtles and both sea surface temperatures (SST) in the West Atlantic for years of declining growth rates (r = -.94) and the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) for all years (r = .74). Granger-causality analysis also supports the latter finding. We discuss multiple stressors that could reinforce and prolong the effect of the ERS. This study demonstrates the importance of region-wide collaborations.

CitSci.org: A New Model for Managing, Documenting, and Sharing Citizen Science Data.

Citizen science projects have the potential to advance science by increasing the volume and variety of data, as well as innovation. Yet this potential has not been fully realized, in part because citizen science data are typically not widely shared and reused. To address this and related challenges, we built CitSci.org (see www.citsci.org), a customizable platform that allows users to collect and generate diverse datasets. We hope that CitSci.org will ultimately increase discoverability and confidence in citizen science observations, encouraging scientists to use such data in their own scientific research.

Reference intervals and relationships between health status, carapace length, body mass, and water temperature and concentrations of plasma total protein and protein electrophoretogram fractions in Atlantic loggerhead sea turtles and green turtles.

OBJECTIVE: To determine reference intervals for concentrations of plasma total protein (TP) and electrophoretogram fractions (ELFs) for healthy, wild loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas) and to assess relationships between TP and ELF concentrations and health status, body size, body mass, and water temperature. DESIGN: Evaluation study. ANIMALS: 437 healthy and 35 ill Atlantic loggerhead sea turtles and 152 healthy and 3 ill Atlantic green turtles. PROCEDURES: Free-ranging turtles were captured from a nuclear power plant intake canal in southern Florida. Plasma samples were obtained from all turtles. Plasma TP and ELF concentrations were measured, and reference intervals were calculated. Wilcoxon rank-sum tests were used to compare TP and ELF values between healthy and ill loggerhead sea turtles. Spearman rank correlations were evaluated between concentrations of TP and ELFs and carapace length, body mass, and water temperature. RESULTS: Reference intervals for TP concentrations were 2.2 to 5.2 g/dL and 2.0 to 5.4 g/dL for loggerhead sea turtles and green turtles, respectively. Except for gamma-globulin, concentrations of ELFs were significantly higher in healthy than in ill loggerhead sea turtles. There was a positive correlation between TP, alpha-globulin, beta-globulin, and gamma-globulin concentrations and water temperature in loggerhead sea turtles and between only TP and alpha-globulin concentrations and water temperature in green turtles. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Reference intervals for concentrations of TP and ELFs for healthy, free-ranging loggerhead sea turtles and green turtles can be used in combination with other diagnostic tools to assess health status of sea turtles.