{"id":34510,"date":"2026-08-28T10:28:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T14:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=34510"},"modified":"2026-08-27T18:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T22:07:00","slug":"some-galapagos-yellow-sea-turtles-remain-homebodies-surprising-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2026\/08\/some-galapagos-yellow-sea-turtles-remain-homebodies-surprising-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Gal\u00e1pagos \u2018yellow\u2019 sea turtles remain homebodies, surprising scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sea turtles are famous for being prodigious wanderer<\/strong>s. Guided by the Earth\u2019s magnetic field, oceanic currents, and the sun, they tend to crisscross the seas in search of food, returning to the region of their birth every few years to breed. So when scientists discovered a population of sea turtles who appear to be very much homebodies<\/strong>, they were taken aback.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere we show that \u2018yellow-morph\u2019 green sea turtles \u2013 one of two genetically distinct forms \u2013 occupy individual foraging areas which span one or more islands in the Gal\u00e1pagos. We expected them to migrate to distant beaches in the western Pacific to reproduce, yet interestingly, none of our satellite-tagged turtles even left the Gal\u00e1pagos Marine Reserve over the three years of our study,\u201d said Dr John W Rowe, a professor at Alma College in the United States and the corresponding author of a new study in Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Black and yellow<\/em><\/p>\n

Green sea turtles are unique among the seven living species in being mainly vegetarian<\/strong>. Hatchlings start life as omnivores, but once fully grown, their diet consists of seagrasses and algae. Yellow-morph green sea turtles roam the western Pacific Ocean\u2019s tropical and subtropical latitudes, while black-morphs live in the eastern Pacific west of the Americas below southern California. The only known waters in the world where these two coexist is around the Gal\u00e1pagos, where they intermingle and happily feed on the same species of marine plants. However, yellow morphs tend to grow faster than black morphs when young, which suggests that uncharacterized physiological differences do exist.<\/p>\n

Rowe and colleagues set out to study the yellow morph\u2019s habitat preferences, range, and movements between islands within the 198,000 sq km of the Gal\u00e1pagos Marine Reserve. In 2015, they gently caught seven adult males and two adult females in the shallow waters off four islands. They gave them nicknames and fitted them with electronic tags that sent \u2018pings\u2019 to the low-orbit Argos satellite network. The scientists tracked their charges for up to 418 days, typically until the tags fell off or stopped transmitting.<\/p>\n

Overall, the turtles preferred to stay in shallow coastal waters, although occasionally they ventured up to 25km offshore. Five of the nine animals stayed mostly in the vicinity of a single island during the study period, while Bernardo and Sara traveled between the islands of Isabela and San Crist\u00f3bal. Leandro trekked between Isabela and Espa\u00f1ola, while Ainoa displayed the most wanderlust: originally tagged off San Crist\u00f3bal, she subsequently moved to Santa Cruz and later to Isabela. Interestingly, such movement between islands was only seen during the cooler months from April to October. The mean size of a single turtle\u2019s home range was 1,498 sq km, but this varied greatly among individuals.<\/p>\n

The turtle moves (but not much)<\/em><\/p>\n

The authors concluded that yellow-morph green turtles in the Gal\u00e1pagos are remarkably stay-at-home<\/strong>. However, they warned that the study was only a snapshot in time, so that periodic long-distance dispersal may have been missed.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince female yellow-morph green sea turtles are not known to lay eggs on the beaches of the Gal\u00e1pagos, we believe that they will eventually leave the area to return to their natal beaches in the western Pacific. In contrast, some female black-morph green turtles do nest in the Gal\u00e1pagos: depending on the individual, those may be year-round residents in the archipelago, travel to other nearby oceanic islands, or even to feeding grounds off Central and South America,\u201d said coauthor Dr Juan Pablo Mu\u00f1oz P\u00e9rez, a professor at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador.<\/p>\n

The scientists also emphasized the importance of conserving pristine the coastal and between-island routes that the turtles use within these islands.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince individual turtles may rely on waters around multiple islands, the quality of habitat that is available for foraging should be maintained intact across all islands, and not allowed to degrade anywhere,\u201d said Rowe.<\/p>\n

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JOURNAL<\/h4>\n

Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sea turtles are famous for being prodigious wanderers. Guided by the Earth\u2019s magnetic field, oceanic currents, and the sun, they tend to crisscross the seas in search of food, returning to the region of their birth every few years to breed. So when scientists discovered a population of sea turtles who appear to be very… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34511,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"no","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[798,915],"tags":[921,922,920],"class_list":["post-34510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ecology","category-nature","tag-habitat-preferences","tag-home","tag-ocean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34513,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34510\/revisions\/34513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}