WILDLIFE OF THE WEEK
Flatback Sea Turtle
Besides sharing some of my favorite flora and fauna, another reason why I love Wildlife of the Week is getting to learn more myself about species I’ve never heard of. This week’s edition is just that: an animal I only learned about this past week while chatting with a colleague that formerly did research on sea turtles. Having gotten my start as a conservation scientist interning with a sea turtle conservation program in Costa Rica over a decade ago, I have always had a soft spot for sea turtles and a familiarity with their biology. From giving hundreds of introductory lectures to volunteer tourists during my time studying and conserving sea turtles in the Caribbean, I also thought I knew them very well. So imagine my surprise when my colleague mentioned the Flatback sea turtle (Natator depressus), a species (and genus, for that matter!) I’d never, ever heard of. It’s not typically a shock to find out about a beetle or plant species you’ve never encountered before—after all, there are hundreds of thousands of species all over the world—but a sea turtle??
By contrast, (I checked before writing this post) there are only seven extant sea turtle species on Earth, and I had totally missed this one. To my weak defense, this turtle frequents only the subtropical and tropical waters along Australia’s North, East, and West coasts, as well as waters around Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, with all but one of their major nesting sites on the Australian coastline. This is a remarkably small range for sea turtles, which tend to inhabit whole oceans or more if they have multiple breeding populations. Perhaps better getting me off the hook, they were considered a subspecies of green turtle until 1988; surprisingly late for a big and very visible animal.
Flatbacks are named for their more flattened, smoother shell than other closely related sea turtles (the Green and Hawksbill turtles), they have a lower, “compressed” profile and a thinner, weaker shell overall. With such a weak shell, they tend to stick to shallow waters further from large predators and where pressures wouldn’t be great enough to damage their bodies. They primarily eat small invertebrates like sea cucumbers, shrimp, snails, soft corals, sponges, and jellyfish.
This fascinating animal is a great reminder that nature always has more in store for you, and that chatting with other nature nerds is never a bad idea. You never know what you might learn!
A Flatback sea turtle nesting in Queensland, Australia. Photo by Lyndie Malan, Wikimedia Commons
A flatback landing ashore for nesting in Western Australia. This view gives an excellent perspective on their low profile! Photo © Calen Offield, seaturtlestatus.org
The author watching a behind-schedule leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) finish laying a nest of eggs just after dawn in Gandoca, Costa Rica circa 2009.
Introducing: Field Notes
With Spring starting up the “big show” of nature here in the Northern Hemisphere, I’ll have more excuses to get out into natural areas and see what I find. This gave me the idea for a new type of mini-article for the newsletter: Field Notes! These will be quick accounts (with accompanying photos!) of places visited (for now, during the newsletter week) and the experiences I had there. Check out the first one below!
FIELD NOTE
Early Spring Forests
Hundreds of Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) sprouting their umbrella-shaped stalks while the forest canopy above is still bare.
A morning stroll through the Georgia Piedmont this weekend showed just how quickly Spring is progressing, even when many of the trees here remain bare. Actually, there’s been quite a bit of Spring life appearing that is here because the trees are still bare. A great example are Spring ephemerals and other early wildflowers like Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) that find plenty of sunlight on the forest floor while the canopy is still open, but which live the rest of the summer in shadow when that verdant roof of trees forms over them. These
RECOMMENDED READING
FEATURED POST
A Beginner Naturalist’s Guide to Taxonomy
Naturalist terms like Genus, Family, Order, Species can get pretty confusing in a hurry. Why exactly do we have all of these terms and what are they for? This quick post will give you the rundown on taxonomy and help you better understand how species are named and organized.
NATURALIST WORD OF THE WEEK
Plastron (n.) - the shell material on the ventral (belly-side) part of a turtles body.
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