Southernmost Reports of the Hawksbill Sea Turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata (Linnaeus, 1766), in Argentina

PROSDOCIMI L; BRUNO I; DIAZ, L. ; GONZÁLEZ CARMAN, V. ; ALBAREDA, D. ; REMIS, M.I.

HERPETOLOGICAL REVIEW

SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES

Año: 2014 vol. 45 p. 1 - 5

0018-084X

The hawksbill sea turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata (Linnaeus 1766), is the most tropical of all sea turtle species, distributed along the central region of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans (Mortimer and Donnelly 2008; Witzell 1983). The species lives in close association with hard-substrate communities such as coral reefs, foraging primarily on sponges, and may also occur in coastal lagoons and bays (Meylan 1988; Plotkin 2003).For a long time, hawksbills, in contrast to the other species of sea turtles, were thought to not undertake extensive migrations (Carr et al. 1966; Van Dam and Diez 1998; Witzell 1983). However, satellite tracking and mark-recapture studies have provided information about movements of the species, which are on the scale of hundreds of kilometers (Bellini et al. 2000; Marcovaldi et al. 2012; Parker et al. 2009; Troëng et al. 2005; Van Dam et al. 2008; Whiting and Koch 2006).