Monthly samples of seven species penaeid shrimps, namely, Penaeus aztecus (Ives, 1891), Penaus hathor (Burkenroad, 1959) japonicus (Spence Bate,1888), kerathurus (Forskal,1775), semisulcatus (De Haan,1844), Metapenaeus monoceros (Fabricus, 1798) and Metapenaeopsis aegyptia (Galil & Golani, 1990) were collected from Antalya Bay in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea March, 2019 through 2020. Except fo...

Hybridization among sea turtle species has been widely reported in the Atlantic Ocean, but their detection in the Pacific Ocean is limited to just two individual hybrid turtles, in the northern hemisphere. Herein, we report, for the first time in the southeast Pacific, the presence of a sea turtle hybrid between the green turtle Chelonia mydas and the hawksbill turtle Eretmochelys imbricata. Th...

Antimicrobial peptides play a major role in innate immunity. The penaeidins, initially characterized from the shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei, are a family of antimicrobial peptides that appear to be expressed in all penaeid shrimps. As of recent, a large number of penaeid nucleotide sequences have been identified from a variety of penaeid shrimp species and these sequences currently reside in seve...

Turtle blood flukes belonging to the family Spirorchiidae (Digenea) represent a major threat for sea turtle health and are considered the most important parasitic cause of turtle stranding and mortality worldwide. Despite the large diversity of spirorchiid species found globally, there are only 2 records for free-ranging Mediterranean sea turtles that date back to the late 1800s involving just ...

Fisheries bycatch of marine animals has been linked to population declines of multiple species, including many sea turtles. Altering the visual cues associated with fishing gear may reduce sea turtle bycatch. We examined the effectiveness of illuminating gillnets with ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes for reducing green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) interactions. We found that the mean sea t...

A total of 3528 specimens of freshwater turtles belonging to two families viz., Geoemydidae (Brown River Turtle, Kachuga smithi; Indian Saw-backed turtle, K. tecta; Brahminy Rrive Turtle, Hardella thurgi; Spotted Pond Turtle, Geoclemys hamiltonii) and Trionychidae (Indian Soft-shell Turtle, Aspederates gangeticus; Peacock Soft-shell Turtle, A.hurum; Narrow-headed Soft-shell Turtle, Chitra indic...

Nascent fungal infections are currently considered as one of the main threats for biodiversity and ecosystem health, and have driven several animal species into critical risk of extinction. Sea turtles are one of the most endangered groups of animals and only seven species have survived to date. Here, we described two pathogenic species, i.e., Fusarium falciforme and Fusarium keratoplasticum, t...

Habitat bioaugmentation and introduction of protective microbiota have been proposed as potential conservation strategies to rescue endangered mammals and amphibians from emerging diseases. For both strategies, insight into the microbiomes of the endangered species and their habitats is essential. Here, we sampled nests of the endangered sea turtle species Eretmochelys imbricata that were infec...

The loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta, Linnaeus, 1758) is the most abundant sea turtle species in the Mediterranean Sea, where commercial fishing appears to be the main driver of mortality. So far, information on sea turtle bycatch in Italy is limited both in space and time due to logistical problems in data collected through onboard observations and on a limited number of vessels involved...

Sea turtles interact with a variety of fishing gears across their broad geographic distributions and ontogenetic habitat shifts. Cumulative assessments of multi-gear bycatch impacts on sea turtle populations are critical for coherent fisheries bycatch management, but such estimates are difficult to achieve, due to low fisheries observer effort, and a single-species, single-fishery management fo...