Youngkin, Dale Allan

Information is lacking regarding the foraging ecology of many sea turtle species. This represents the first long-term study to partition gut content samples to look for differences in diets among seasons, across size classes, or between health or sex categories. In this study complete gut contents from loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) that stranded on Cumberland Island, Georgia USA from 1979--99 are analyzed (n = 369). The long-term nature of this study and large sample size allows for comparisons of diets across years as well as the categories mentioned above. Diets were shown to shift significantly over the years of the study as well as among seasons. Ontogenetic shifts in diets were also observed, while diets did not seem to differ with sex and apparent health of the turtles. The findings from this study point to potential biases from shorter-term studies that lack a robust distribution of turtle size.