James Spotila, PhD

James Spotila, PhD, a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, was quoted in a LiveScience article on Jan. 18 about his research mapping danger zones in the Pacific for leatherback turtles’ encounters with industrial longline fisheries.

James Spotila, PhD, a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, was quoted in a story on WHYY-FM/Newsworks.org on Jan. 13 about research he conducted to map areas of the Pacific Ocean where critically endangered leatherback turtles are most likely to interact with fisheries where they may be killed.

The second-most-common catch on Costa Rica’s longline fisheries in the last decade was not a commercial fish species. It was olive ridley sea turtles.

Three leading scientists involved in the conservation of giant pandas at the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in Chengdu, China will present a mini-symposium, “Biology and Conservation of the Giant Panda,” at Drexel University on August 22.

New research suggests that climate change could exacerbate existing threats to critically endangered leatherback turtles and nearly wipe out the population in the eastern Pacific. Deaths of turtle eggs and hatchlings in nests buried at hotter, drier beaches are the leading projected cause of the potential climate-related decline, according to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change by a research team from Drexel, Princeton University, other institutions and government agencies.

Drexel University researchers have found that the climate conditions at a major leatherback turtle nesting beach affects the early survival of turtle eggs and hatchlings. They predict, based on projections from multiple models, that egg and hatchling survival will drop by half in the next 100 years as a result of global climate change.