Sea turtle crisis: Moisture, not just heat impacts sex of sea turtle hatchlings
 

Male sea turtles are disappearing and not just in Australia. Researchers found that 97 to 100 percent of hatchlings in southeast Florida have been female since 2002. They are the first to show why and how moisture conditions inside the nest in addition to heat affect the development and sex ratios of turtle embryos, using a novel technique they developed to estimate sex ratios with a male-specific, transcriptional molecular marker Sox9.



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