The Leatherback Trust, Goldring-Gund Marine Biology Station, Playa Grande, Guanacaste, Costa Rica.
Cape Eleuthera Institute, The Cape Eleuthera Island School, Cape Eleuthera, Eleuthera, The Bahamas.
PLoS One. 2019 Sep 6;14(9):e0218838. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218838. eCollection 2019.
There is a wealth of published information on the epibiont communities of sea turtles, yet many of these studies have exclusively sampled epibionts found only on the carapace. Considering that epibionts may be found on almost all body-surfaces and that it is highly plausible to expect different regions of the body to host distinct epibiont taxa, there is a need for quantitative information on the spatial variation of epibiont communities on turtles. To achieve this, we measured how total epibiont abundance and biomass on olive ridley turtles Lepidochelys olivacea varies among four body-areas of the hosts (n = 30). We showed that epibiont loads on olive ridleys are higher, both in terms of number and biomass, on the skin than they are on the carapace or plastron. This contrasts with previous findings for other hard-shelled sea turtles, where epibionts are usually more abundant on the carapace or plastron. Moreover, the arguably most ubiquitous epibiont taxon for other hard-shelled sea turtles, the barnacle Chelonibia spp., only occurred in relatively low numbers on olive ridleys and the barnacles Stomatolepas elegans and Platylepas hexastylos are far more abundant. We postulate that these differences between the epibiont communities of different sea turtle taxa could indicate that the carapaces of olive ridley turtles provide a more challenging substratum for epibionts than do the hard shells of other sea turtles. In addition, we conclude that it is important to conduct full body surveys when attempting to produce a holistic qualitative or quantitative characterization of the epibiont communities of sea turtles.
关于海龟的外生物群落，已经有大量的文献资料，但这些研究大多只对甲壳上发现的外生物进行了取样。考虑到外生物可能存在于海龟几乎所有的体表上，而且很有可能预期身体的不同区域会有不同的外生物分类群，因此需要有关海龟外生物群落空间变化的定量信息。为了实现这一目标，我们测量了橄榄绿海龟（Lepidochelys olivacea）的四个身体部位上总外生物丰度和生物量的变化。结果表明，与其他硬壳海龟相比，橄榄绿海龟的外生物负载在皮肤部位的数量和生物量都更高。这与以前对其他硬壳海龟的研究结果相反，在这些研究中，外生物通常在甲壳或腹甲上更为丰富。此外，对其他硬壳海龟来说可能是最普遍的外生物分类群藤壶 Chelonibia spp.，在橄榄绿海龟身上的数量相对较少，而 Stomatolepas elegans 和 Platylepas hexastylos 藤壶则更为丰富。我们推测，不同海龟类群的外生物群落之间的这些差异可能表明，橄榄绿海龟的甲壳为外生物提供了比其他硬壳海龟更具挑战性的基质。此外，我们得出结论，在试图对海龟的外生物群落进行全面的定性或定量描述时，进行全身调查非常重要。
