Loggerhead Sea Turtle Environmental Sex Determination: Implications of Moisture and Temperature for Climate Change Based Predictions for Species Survival

It has been proposed that because marine turtles have environmentally determined sex by incubation temperature, elevated temperatures might skew sex ratios to unsustainable levels, leading to extinction. Elevated temperatures may also reduce availability of suitable nesting sites via sea level rise. Increased tropical storm activity can directly affect nest site moisture, embryonic development, and the probability that nests will survive. Here, we question some of these assumptions and review the limits of sex ratio estimates. Sea turtles may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought, in part because of hitherto unappreciated mechanisms for coping with variable incubation conditions. J. Exp. Zool. (Mol. Dev. Evol.) 324B: 295-314, 2015. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.