Results

And here come the results that you were looking forward to discover!

Predation

When it comes to predation, 80% of the non-protected nests were predated, while only 8.7% of the protected nests with predator-excluder systems were. Thus, the predation probability decreased significantly when the nests were protected!

Predation probability on in-situ nests (IS, not protected) and predator-excluder systems nests (PES, protected). 

Hatching success

The mean hatching success estimated by the excavations of the PES was 58%. However, we were not able to obtain an estimate of hatching success in natural nests (the non-protected ones) because most of them were predated.

Despite this, we did an assessment of 4 environmental variables on the hatching probability.

Hatching egg probability depending on the depth of the first relocated egg (A), the minutes after midnight in which the relocation took place (B), the new beach zone where the nest was relocated (Open or Border) (C) and minutes the eggs spent unburied (D).

The hatching success increased significantly when the nests were relocated deeper (A) and in the “Border” beach zone instead of “Open” (C). The hatching success also increased significantly the later the relocation was done (B). Finally, the time the eggs spent exposed did not have a significant effect on the hatching success (D).

This sounds interesting, right? But how can we explain these results?

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