Olive Ridley Sea Turtle Hatching Success as a Function of Microbial Abundance and the Microenvironment of In Situ Nest Sand at Ostional, Costa Rica

Figure 4

Relationship between hatching success and microbial abundance (bacteria and fungi) for nests located in each nesting area of the beach ( and , resp.). Regression lines for bacteria (solid) and fungi (dashed) are included for visualization purposes. While there was a negative correlation between hatching success and bacterial abundance for all nests, the correlation between hatching success and fungal abundance was marginal ( and , resp.). For Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients, see Table 1.