South Carolina Endangered Species Program : final completion report to NOAA fisheries

There are four species of sea turtles that occur in South Carolina waters. Standardized aerial surveys over the past 20 years show a decline in the number of nesting loggerheads in South Carolina. To mitigate factors impacting sea turtles in the coastal environment requires coordination and cooperation among various federal, state and local government agencies and private groups. The SCDNR state program is the best means of implementing recovery plan tasks with these other entities. Five studies are covered under this grant program: Technical Guidance, Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network, Movement and Habitat Use of Post-Nesting Loggerhead Sea Turtles, Information and Education and Foraging Habitat Delineation

Florida manatee

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources published guides to many threatened animals living in the state. This guide gives information about the Florida manatee, including description, status, habitat, conservation challenges & recommendations, and measures of success

Cannonball Jellyfish

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources published guides to many threatened animals living in the state. This guide gives information about the Cannonball Jellyfish, including description, status, habitat, conservation challenges & recommendations, and measures of success

South Carolina Endangered Species Program final completion report to NOAA fisheries

There are four species of sea turtles that inhabit South Carolina waters. They include the loggerhead, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback and green sea turtles. Threats to sea turtles in the marine environment are addressed in the Recovery Plans for these species, and many of the recovery tasks include the SCDNR as the “responsible agency”. Mitigation of factors impacting sea turtles in the coastal environment requires coordination and cooperation among various federal, state and local government agencies and private groups. The SCDNR Marine Turtle Conservation Program is the best means of implementing Recovery Plan tasks with these other entities. Five studies are covered under this grant program: Technical Guidance, Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network, Movement and Habitat Use of Post-Nesting Loggerhead Sea Turtles, Information and Education and Foraging Habitat Delineation

Identifying patterns in foraging-area origins in breeding aggregations of migratory species: Loggerhead turtles in the Northwest Atlantic.

Population assessments conducted at reproductive sites of migratory species necessitate understanding the foraging-area origins of breeding individuals. Without this information, efforts to contextualize changes in breeding populations and develop effective management strategies are compromised. We used stable isotope analysis of tissue samples collected from loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) nesting at seven sites in the Northern Recovery Unit (NRU) of the eastern United States (North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia) to assign females to three separate foraging areas in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean (NWA). We found that the majority of the females at NRU nesting sites (84.4%) use more northern foraging areas in the Mid-Atlantic Bight, while fewer females use more proximate foraging areas in the South Atlantic Bight (13.4%) and more southerly foraging areas in the Subtropical Northwest Atlantic (2.2%). We did not find significant latitudinal or temporal trends in the proportions of NRU females originating from different foraging areas. Combining these findings with previous data from stable isotope and satellite tracking studies across NWA nesting sites showed that variation in the proportion of adult loggerheads originating from different foraging areas is primarily related differences between recovery units: individuals in the NRU primarily use the Mid-Atlantic Bight foraging area, while individuals from the three Florida recovery units primarily use the Subtropical Northwest Atlantic and Eastern Gulf of Mexico foraging areas. Because each foraging area is associated with its own distinct ecological characteristics, environmental fluctuations and anthropogenic threats that affect the abundance and productivity of individuals at nesting sites, this information is critical for accurately evaluating population trends and developing effective region-specific management strategies

Evaluating the landscape of fear between apex predatory sharks and mobile sea turtles across a large dynamic seascape

The "landscape of fear" model has been proposed as a unifying concept in ecology, describing, in part, how animals behave and move about in their environment. The basic model predicts that as an animal's landscape changes from low to high risk of predation, prey species will alter their behavior to risk avoidance. However, studies investigating and evaluating the landscape of fear model across large spatial scales (tens to hundreds of thousands of square kilometers) in dynamic, open, aquatic systems involving apex predators and highly mobile prey are lacking. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated predator-prey relationships between tiger sharks ( Galeocerdo cuvier ) and loggerhead turtles ( Caretta caretta ) in the North Atlantic Ocean. This included the use of satellite tracking to examine shark and turtle distributions as well as their surfacing behaviors under varying levels of home range overlap. Our findings revealed patterns that deviated from our a priori predictions based on the landscape of fear model. Specifically, turtles did not alter their surfacing behaviors to risk avoidance when overlap in shark-turtle core home range was high. However, in areas of high overlap with turtles, sharks exhibited modified surfacing behaviors that may enhance predation opportunity. We suggest that turtles may be an important factor in determining shark distribution, whereas for turtles, other life history trade-offs may play a larger role in defining their habitat use. We propose that these findings are a result of both biotic and physically driven factors that independently or synergistically affect predator-prey interactions in this system. These results have implications for evolutionary biology, community ecology, and wildlife conservation. Further, given the difficulty in studying highly migratory marine species, our approach and conclusions may be applied to the study of other predator-prey systems

A motor unit-based model of muscle fatigue

Muscle fatigue is a temporary decline in the force and power capacity of skeletal muscle resulting from muscle activity. Because control of muscle is realized at the level of the motor unit (MU), it seems important to consider the physiological properties of motor units when attempting to understand and predict muscle fatigue. Therefore, we developed a phenomenological model of motor unit fatigue as a tractable means to predict muscle fatigue for a variety of tasks and to illustrate the individual contractile responses of MUs whose collective action determines the trajectory of changes in muscle force capacity during prolonged activity. An existing MU population model was used to simulate MU firing rates and isometric muscle forces and, to that model, we added fatigue-related changes in MU force, contraction time, and firing rate associated with sustained voluntary contractions. The model accurately estimated endurance times for sustained isometric contractions across a wide range of target levels. In addition, simulations were run for situations that have little experimental precedent to demonstrate the potential utility of the model to predict motor unit fatigue for more complicated, real-world applications. Moreover, the model provided insight into the complex orchestration of MU force contributions during fatigue, that would be unattainable with current experimental approaches