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

Table 2

Relationships between bacterial and fungal abundance and the partial pressure of oxygen (pO₂) and temperature in the first (1st) and second (2nd) half of incubation for all study nests. There was a negative correlation between bacterial abundance and nest pO₂ in both the first and second half of incubation and a positive correlation with nest temperatures in the second half of incubation. There was also a negative correlation between fungal abundance and nest pO₂ in the first half of incubation.

Microbial abundance		pO2				Temperature
		1st		2nd		1st		2nd
		Bacteria	12		0.006		0.002	0.441	0.152	0.818	0.001
Fungi	10		0.013		0.187	0.430	0.215	0.430	0.215

: Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and : sample size. Values in bold indicate statistically significant correlations.