Thread by @turtleyscience

Welcome to the last tweet in #SeaTurtleTalks
"Oxidative stress: a cost to arribada nesting in olive ridley sea turtles"
I'm Gabriela Arango, PhD candidate in the @JPVM_lab at the @berkeleyIB in UCB. Interested on 🐢💚
✅Physiology
✅Arribadas
✅Oxidative stress
✅Hypoxia

Ridleys exhibit a polymorphic nesting behavior:
Solitary = alone 🐢😕
Arribada = thousands of turtles nesting at once 🐢🐢🐢🐢🤩
Arribadas may provide fitness benefits 🧐 (i.e. mate finding or predator satiation), but the potential costs of arribada nesting remain understudied

What we wanted: To explore the potential trade-offs of the fitness benefits associated with arribada nesting

What we found:
Arribadas had higher
⬆️Heavier
⬆️Progesterone
⬆️Thyroid hormones
⬆️Lipid peroxidation
⬆️Protein carbonyls

What it means:
Oxidative stress may be a trade-off for a reproductive mode that carries increased fitness benefits in a capital breeder

Future directions:
🧐Does kemp ridleys observe the same effect?
🧐Larger samples size

Thank you all who made this possible!