Human Impact on Sea Turtles Changed Their DNA Flinders University
go to original October 30, 2013

Olive ridley sea turtle. (Bernard Gagnon/Wikipedia)

Endangered and iconic sea turtles have a record in their DNA pointing to loss of genetic diversity caused by recent human exploitation, a Flinders University study has revealed for the first time.

Between 1960 and 1990, more than 2 million olive ridley turtles (as many as 350,000 in 1968 alone) and their eggs were commercially harvested along the coast of Mexico.

The study, which demonstrated the significant consequences of human overexploitation of marine life, was conducted by PhD student Jimena Rodríguez-Zárate and Professor Luciano Beheregaray from the Molecular Ecology Laboratory at Flinders University.

The work used samples from 334 turtles collected across 18 nesting sites and around 3000 kilometres of Mexico’s Pacific coast.

Read the rest at ScienceAlert

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