Abstract

The 7 sea turtle species are found in all the seas of the world. Some of them have a clear predilection for the equatorial zones where they must come to lay eggs. The hawksbill turtle is one of the main species to lay eggs on the beaches of Martinique. The present study explores and compares the diversity of diatoms communities growing on the shell of nesting hawksbill turtle sampling in 3 beaches in Martinique (West Indies Island) using light microscopy. This is the first study on the global diatom communities (counting and observations) on this turtle species. The exploratory analysis on the counting effort to standardize the counting process for all turtle species demonstrated that diatom richness is largely underestimated. Hawksbill turtle are great reservoirs of diverse genera and diatom species many still unknown, probably new and require substantial taxonomic work. There is poor correlation between turtle diatom communities and no correlation with the sampling beach. The community variations depend on individuals. The diatom turtle communities are often benthic diatom coming from the turtle environment and are related to the turtle behavior. A comparative analysis of diatom local flora (sea grass bed and coral reef), world marine flora, and turtle communities could allow a better understanding of turtle habitats and behaviors at local scale, but also largely scale. Learning about other organisms living with turtles, environmental contaminations of their habitats by experimental way of using eDNA data of biofilm and the adsorption capacity of EPS have yet to be performed.

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