April Burt

University of Oxford | OX · Department of Zoology

Changes in marine ecosystems from human stressors, and concerns over how species will respond to these changes have emphasized the importance of understanding and monitoring crucial demographic parameters for population models. Long-lived, migratory, marine vertebrates such as sea turtles are particularly vulnerable to changes. Life-history paramet...

Vast quantities of debris are beaching at remote islands in the western Indian Ocean. We carry out marine dispersal simulations incorporating currents, waves, winds, beaching, and sinking, for both terrestrial and marine sources of debris, to predict where this debris comes from. Our results show that most terrestrial debris beaching at these remot...

Island ecosystems are disproportionally impacted by biodiversity loss and as such their effective management is critical to global conservation efforts. Practitioners world‐wide work to manage island sites and species to conserve them, but various day‐to‐day barriers compromise these efforts, reducing management effectiveness and preventing local a...

Changes in marine ecosystems from human stressors, and concerns over how species will respond to these changes have emphasized the importance of understanding and monitoring crucial demographic parameters for population models. Long-lived, migratory, marine vertebrates such as sea turtles are particularly vulnerable to changes. Life-history paramet...

Around the world, declines in the mean size of nesting sea turtles have been reported with concerns of a concomitant decrease in the reproductive output of populations. Here, we explore this possibility using long-term observations of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) at Aldabra Atoll, Seychelles. Based on > 4500 individual measurements over 21 years...

The Republic of Seychelles is one of six African Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and has a marine-based economy reliant on fisheries and international tourism. Seychelles has been flagged by the United Nations as highly vulnerable to climate change. Climatic threats are compounded with population declines of key fishery species. A progressive...

Ocean warming is increasing the incidence, scale, and severity of global-scale coral bleaching and mortality, culminating in the third global coral bleaching event that occurred during record marine heatwaves of 2014-2017. While local effects of these events have been widely reported, the global implications remain unknown. Analysis of 15,066 reef...

Seabirds, being long-lived top-level marine predators, are often considered to be valuable environmental indicators. With growing evidence of seabird declines worldwide, it is essential to monitor changes in populations and determine drivers of change. The Seychelles Archipelago supports the greatest abundance of seabirds in the tropical Indian Oce...

Abstract The failure to meet global biodiversity targets clearly indicates the need for biodiversity management and conservation efforts to be more effective, and this in turn requires better understanding of the current barriers to success. Islands are known as biodiversity hotspots but nowhere has biodiversity loss been so acute as in island ecos...

Birgus latro, the largest terrestrial arthropod in the world, has undergone a substantial decline globally over the last decades, with only a few healthy populations remaining where they are actively protected. We aimed to quantify demographic and spatio-temporal dynamics of a protected population of B. latro on Aldabra Atoll (Seychelles). Based on...

Green turtles Chelonia mydas have been subject to high levels of anthropogenic exploitation, with harvesting at their nesting sites especially pronounced throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to worldwide declines. Due to their delayed sexual maturity, long-term protection and monitoring is crucial to allow and accurately demon...

A total of 5478 fishes were sampled between 2009 and 2020 to assess length–weight, length–length and weight–weight relationships in 39 marine species from 10 families caught in the Seychelles waters by the artisanal fishery. Two types of length (total length TL, fork length FL) and three types of weight (whole weight WT, gutted weight GW and gilled...

Small island states receive unprecedented amounts of the world's plastic waste. In March 2019, we removed as much plastic litter as possible from Aldabra Atoll, a remote UNESCO World Heritage Site, and estimated the money and effort required to remove the remaining debris. We removed 25 tonnes at a cost of $224,537, which equates to around $10,000...

The third global bleaching event caused prolonged elevated sea surface temperatures from 2014 to 2017 that heavily impacted coral reefs worldwide. This study determines changes in benthic community following this bleaching event at a remote UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Western Indian Ocean. Aldabra Atoll offers a rare opportunity to study glob...

Aldabra Atoll’s marine protected area was expanded in April 2019 from 71, 612 km2 to 177, 447 km2, which provides greater protection to the marine mammal populations that use these waters. Opportunistic observational data on marine mammals sighted around Aldabra were collected between 2008 and 2018. Patterns in their location and over time were ass...

The aim of ecological restoration is to establish self-sustaining and resilient systems. In coral reef restoration, transplantation of nursery-grown corals is seen as a potential method to mitigate reef degradation and enhance recovery. The transplanted reef should be capable of recruiting new juvenile corals to ensure long-term resilience. Here, w...

The once ‘Critically Endangered’ Seychelles Magpie-robin was down to just 12 individuals in 1960 on one island of the granitic Seychelles. In 2015, due to intensive long-term management the population stands at around 280 birds on five islands, marking a significant success for this species. Translocations to the islands of Cousin and Cousine have...

The Seychelles Magpie Robin Copsychus sechellarum was once one of the most threatened birds in the world, but was downgraded from Critically Endangered to Endangered after a long-term recovery programme was success- fully implemented. Comprehensive long-term monitoring of this species was conducted on the islands of Cousin and Cousine over an 18-ye...

The restoration of damaged reefs via transplantation of whole coral colonies or coral fragments can increase coral abundance, species diversity and local recruitment. However, the effects of coral transplantation on reef fish and benthic communities still remain poorly studied. In the present study, surveys were undertaken before, during and after...