Armando J. B. Santos

Florida State University | FSU · Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science

Introduction An understanding of animal behavior is critical to determine their ecological role and to inform conservation efforts. However, observing hidden behaviors can be challenging, especially for animals that spend most of their time underwater. Animal-borne devices are valuable tools to estimate hidden behavioral states. Methods We investi...

Sea turtles are vulnerable to climate change since their reproductive output is influenced by incubating temperatures, with warmer temperatures causing lower hatching success and increased feminization of embryos. Their ability to cope with projected increases in ambient temperatures will depend on their capacity to adapt to shifts in climatic regi...

As tartarugas marinhas são animais migratórios e o conhecimento de seus movimentos é vital para a definição de estratégias de manejo. Áreas principais de uso de quatro das cinco espécies que ocorrem no litoral brasileiro, a saber: Caretta caretta, Lepidochelys olivacea, Eretmochelys imbricata e Dermochelys coriacea, foram identificadas através da t...

Fibropapillomatosis (FP) is an infectious disease caused by Chelonid alphaherpesvirus 5 (ChHV5). Nevertheless, its clinical manifestations are considered multifactorial. Due to its relevance, FP is currently monitored in sea turtle populations in the United States, Australia, Caribbean, and Brazil. Between 2000 and 2020, the TAMAR Project/ TAMAR Pr...

Population abundance data are often used to define species’ conservation status. Abundance of marine turtles is typically estimated using nesting beach monitoring data such as nest counts and clutch frequency (CF, i.e., the number of nests female turtles lay within a nesting season). However, studies have shown that CF determined solely from nestin...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are among the most widely used strategy to protect marine ecosystems and are typically designed to protect specific habitats rather than a single and/or multiple species. To inform the conservation of species of conservation concern there is the need to assess whether existing and proposed MPA designs provide protectio...

Population abundance data is often used to define species’ conservation status. Abundance of marine turtles is typically determined using information from nesting beach monitoring such as clutch frequency and remigration interval of nesting females. However, studies have shown that clutch frequency determined solely from nesting beach monitoring da...

We studied the nesting behavior of the Hawksbill Turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) along the northeastern coast of Brazil, specifically in southern Rio Grande do Norte. We compare the peak of nesting activity for several seasons from 2006 to 2016. The raw data consist of daily records of the presence of hawksbill turtle on a beach (N = 3,717). In the...

Recordings were made in nests of Eretmochelys imbricata and 107 samples of 10-min recordings revealed 575 sounds that were classified manually into 4 categories. Our results show that hawksbill turtles vocalize within the nest, especially during and after eclosion, which suggests vocalizations are important for communication among hatchlings to syn...

Knowledge of life history parameters is essential for the effective management of species of conservation concern. For migratory marine vertebrates such as hawksbill sea turtles Eretmochelys imbricata, feeding aggregations are important developmental habitats, allowing the study of population dynamics. Here, we used data from a 31 yr mark-recapture...

The understanding of developmental and reproductive migrations of sea turtles is essential for effective protection and conservation efforts. Flipper tags remain a valuable method for detecting movements and migrations because they are cost-effective and conspicuous, allowing the detection of a tagged animal by any person worldwide. Here we report...

The behavior of sea turtle species can be influenced by the lunar cycle, possibly due to moonlight variability. We analyzed the relationship between nesting behavior and moon phase using nesting hawksbill turtle records for beaches in Northeast Brazil for the 2006–2007 to 2015–2016 seasons. The total number of records was 4807, while the total numb...

Climate change is expected to impact animals that are heavily reliant on environmental factors, such as sea turtles, since the incubation of their eggs, hatching success and sex ratio are influenced by the environment in which eggs incubate. As climate change progresses it is therefore important to understand how climatic conditions influence their...

Supporting information including statistics results and other measures. Distances of INMET weather stations from nesting grounds in each region considered in this study, from north to south (Table A). Nest and climate data availability for each region between 2005–2016 included in our analyses. The typical nesting season in RN occurs between Novemb...

Local climatic conditions can influence sea turtle embryonic development and hatchling viability. Therefore, it is crucial to understand these influences as well as potential ramifications to population stability under future climate change. Here, we examined the influences of five climatic variables (air temperature, accumulated and average precip...

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...

In the 35 years since its inception, the Brazilian National Program for the Conservation of Marine Turtles (TAMAR) has had great success in protecting the five species of sea turtles that occur in Brazil. It has also contributed significantly to worldwide scientific data and knowledge about these species’ biology, such as life cycles and migration...

É com grande satisfação que apresentamos a obra “Conservação das Tartarugas Marinhas no Nordeste do Brasil: Desafios e Perspectivas”, retratando para os acadêmicos e a população em geral, o conhecimento acumulado sobre as espécies de tartarugas marinhas ocorrentes nos diversos estados no Nordeste do Brasil, além das ações e instituições em prol da...

We describe infestation of hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) nests by insects on Pipa beach in the municipality of Tibaudo Sul, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil in January and June 2011. The mean number of live hatchlings (83.96 ± 43.31) was higher in nests unassociated with vegetation, although it is important to consider that a number of param...

We analyzed 410 nest locations from 150 individual nesting hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) on the northeastern Brazilian coast during 8 nesting seasons from 2006 to 2014 to evaluate individual nesting preferences. We determined the consistency of nest site choice within and between nesting seasons for open sand and vegetation nest microh...

Somatic growth dynamics are an integrated response to environmental conditions. Hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) are long-lived, major consumers in coral reef habitats that move over broad geographic areas (hundreds to thousands of kilometers). We evaluated spatio-temporal effects on hawksbill growth dynamics over a 33-yr period and 2...

Genetic markers are often used to designate population units for management and conservation, but widespread sharing of mitochondrial DNA control-region haplotypes defined from short (<500 base-pair [bp]) sequences often limits inferences of population connectivity in marine turtles. Haplotype CM-A8, defined from 490-bp sequences, dominated the hap...

For effective management of species of conservation concern, knowledge of life history parameters is essential. Here, we present the results of one of the longest ongoing capture-mark-recapture studies of juvenile green turtles (Chelonia mydas) worldwide. From 1988 to 2013, 1,279 individual turtles were tagged in Fernando de Noronha, Brazil (3°51′S...

Climate change poses a unique threat to species with temperature dependent sex determination (TSD), such as marine turtles, where increases in temperature can result in extreme sex ratio biases. Knowledge of the primary sex ratio of populations with TSD is key for providing a baseline to inform management strategies and to accurately predict how fu...

ABSTRACT - (Fructification phenology of native plant species and the forest restoration in Fernando de Noronha archipelago, Pernambuco State, Brazil). The annual pattern of fructification phenology of 23 native species of trees and bushes of Fernando de Noronha, Pernambuco State, Brazil was characterized with the aim of guiding the seed collection...

The annual pattern of fructification phenology of 23 native species of trees and bushes of Fernando de Noronha, Pernambuco State, Brazil was characterized with the aim of guiding the seed collection towards the implementation of a local restoration program. It was found that most species (74%) presented higher absolute frequencies of fructification...

Female sea turtles have rarely been observed foraging during the nesting season. This suggests that prior to their migration to nesting beaches the females must store sufficient energy and nutrients at their foraging grounds and must be physiologically capable of undergoing months without feeding. Leptin (an appetite-suppressing protein) and ghreli...

To date, hawksbill turtle Eretmochelys imbricata nesting in Brazil has been esti- mated by recording clutch numbers. To better address conservation assessments and more reli- ably estimate the number of females, the Projeto TAMAR-ICMBio initiated a mark and recapture program of nesting females to gather data on critical parameters such as clutch fr...

In this paper, information is presented on green turtle (Chelonia mydas) nesting on Atol das Rocas (Rocas Atoll), north-eastern Brazil. The temporal distribution of nesting events per season, annual number of nests, carapace length of nesting females, clutch size, hatching success, incubation period, internesting interval, clutch frequency, observe...

Female sea turtles have rarely been observed foraging during the nesting season. This suggests that prior to their migration to nesting beaches the females must store sufficient energy and nutrients at their foraging grounds and must be physiologically capable of undergoing months without feeding. Leptin (an appetite-suppressing protein) and ghreli...

Current understanding of spatial ecology is insufficient in many threatened marine species, failing to provide a solid basis for conservation and management. To address this issue for globally endangered green turtles, we investigated their population distribution by sequencing a mitochondrial control region segment from the Rocas Atoll courtship a...

This study characterized the morphology of the digestive tube of five species of sea turtles. We used specimens found dead along the coast of the state Rio Grande do Norte, as well as specimens accidentally killed as a result of pelagic longline fishing. Nineteen animals of the following species were analyzed: Chelonia mydas (Linnaeus, 1758) (n = 9...

Apresentação e justificativa de categorização O estado de conservação da tartaruga marinha Chelonia mydas (Linnaeus, 1758) (Cheloniidae) foi avaliado de acordo com os critérios da IUCN (2001), com base nos dados disponíveis até 2009. Síntese do processo de avaliação das tartarugas marinhas pode ser encontrada em Peres et al., neste número. A catego...

Female Hawksbill Turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) nesting along the southeast coastline of the state of Rio Grande do Norte Brazil (6°13′40″S, 35°03′05″W) were captured and weighed during the 2006–07 and 2007–08 nesting seasons. The mean value for the first postoviposition mass was 79.6 kg. Individuals that were subsequently recaptured showed a mea...

We present long-term data for hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) nesting in the 2 main rookeries in Brazil: 1) northern Bahia and Sergipe, where the estimated number of nests laid each year increased from 199 in the 1991–1992 nesting season to 1345 in the 2005–2006 season and 2) Rio Grande do Norte, where the estimated number of nests laid in the 2...