Marine Biology Interdisciplinary Program, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA.
Department of Biology, Texas A&M University, 3258 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77843, USA.
Sci Data. 2019 Apr 3;6(1):16. doi: 10.1038/s41597-019-0030-9.
Marine turtles are both flagship species of conservation concern and indicators of ocean health. As highly migratory species, and despite substantial research effort focusing on nesting females and satellite tagging studies, we still know little about the trophic ecology and habitat use of immature stages and males. Consequently, marine turtle biologists began using stable isotope analyses in the last decade to elucidate various aspects of trophic ecology, including habitat use and trophic position. This has resulted in a burgeoning but largely disconnected literature of mostly single-species case studies. Here we comprehensively synthesize this body of work into a unified data repository, the MarTurtSI database. MarTurtSI contains stable isotope data from six of seven marine turtle species ranging from juveniles to adults, in different developmental, feeding, and breeding habitats across multiple ocean basins. MarTurtSI will be curated and updated with the aim of enabling continued comprehensive and global investigations into the trophic ecology of marine turtles especially in the face of climate change and other conservation challenges.
海龟既是保护关注的旗舰物种，也是海洋健康的指标。作为高度洄游的物种，尽管我们已经投入了大量的研究精力来关注产卵的雌性海龟和卫星标记研究，但我们对未成年阶段和雄性海龟的营养生态学和栖息地利用仍知之甚少。因此，海龟生物学家在过去十年中开始使用稳定同位素分析来阐明营养生态学的各个方面，包括栖息地利用和营养位置。这导致了大量但基本上相互孤立的单一物种案例研究文献的涌现。在这里，我们将这项工作综合成一个统一的数据库，即 MarTurtSI 数据库。MarTurtSI 包含来自六种海龟物种的稳定同位素数据，从幼体到成体不等，分布在多个海洋盆地的不同发育、摄食和繁殖栖息地中。MarTurtSI 将被管理和更新，目的是能够继续对海龟的营养生态学进行全面和全球性的研究，特别是在面对气候变化和其他保护挑战时。
