查看文章

Baseline hematologic and plasma biochemical analytes provide insight into wildlife health. In recent years, blood analytes have been used to infer foraging strategies and nutritional status of female sea turtles of different species during nesting season in an effort to determine if turtles at this life stage are capital breeders that forage little to none during nesting season. These changes in foraging during nesting have not been documented in loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta). The objective of this study was to evaluate correlations between hematologic, plasma chemistry, immune function, and antioxidative analytes of female loggerhead turtles during nesting season to determine evidence of reduced foraging. We found that chloride tended to increase, while total protein, various plasma protein fractions (pre-albumin, alpha-1-globulins, beta-globulins, total globulins), total white blood cells, superoxide …