Monday, 4 November 2024 Should I stay or should I go? Seasonal space use of loggerhead sea turtle in the Adriatic Sea: The full video of 1st Famnits' Biological Evening is now available
The first lecture of the Famnits' Biological Evenings titled “Should I stay or should I go? Seasonal space use of loggerhead sea turtle in the Adriatic Sea,” was given by Matic Jančič, UP FAMNIT & Blue World Institute, via ZOOM.
About the lecture: The Adriatic Sea is one of the most important marine habitats for loggerhead turtles in the Mediterranean. Oceanic areas of the southern Adriatic provide epipelagic developmental habitat, while the Northern Adriatic is the largest neritic foraging habitat of loggerhead turtles in the Mediterranean. The thermal environment is a key factor in the biology of sea turtles, with thermal constraints becoming evident in winter at the lower limits of temperature valence. Winter distribution in the Adriatic Sea is poorly known with suggested southward movement patterns from the Bay of Trieste and the coasts of West Istria in the summer towards the Lošinj archipelago in winter. We tracked 23 sea turtles to obtain data on their space use within the Adriatic Sea and delineate seasonal home ranges of sea turtles according to the temperature seasonality in the Adriatic Sea. The results provided a basis to evaluate the space use patterns of individual sea turtles in the Adriatic Sea combined with aggregated seasonal space use. Sea turtle space use intersected with existing and proposed Marine Protected Areas and overlapped with industrial fishers' efforts to provide recommendations for conservation.
About the lecturer: Matic is a PhD candidate enrolled at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, with the dissertation title ‘Spatial ecology and conservation of loggerhead sea turtles in the Adriatic Sea’ and is due to graduate in 2024. He is also a teaching assistant at the University of Primorska, Slovenia. He provides materials and supervision in labs and practical work for modules marine ecology, marine conservation biology, advanced topics in conservation biology, and biology and conservation of large vertebrates on the master’s study programme Nature Conservation. He has expertise in statistics and spatial modelling, including programming language R and geographic information system QGIS.
