110 Among other marine megafauna species, sea turtles exhibit complex life cycles, including extensive hatchling dispersals, ocean-wide adult distributions, and philopatric-induced migrations from their foraging areas to their natal beaches to nest (Meylan et al. 1990; Bowen and Karl 2007; Casale et al. 2013). After mating with males, reproductive females generally aggregate at one geographically restricted nesting site (Raposo et al. 2024), where they emerge from the sea multiple times through the nesting season to lay clutches of eggs on sandy shores (Hirth 1980; Mazaris et al. 2009). Although identification of the factors driving sea turtles nesting site selection has received considerable attention (Garmestani et al. 2000; Septiadi et al. 2018; Patrício et al. 2018), our understanding of these complex and multifactorial causes is still limited, as many studies were inconclusive or showed contradictory results (Dodd 1988; Miller et al. 2003; Siqueira-Silva et al. 2020). Sea turtles are usually limited in their nesting site choice as they essentially return to nest on the beach where they hatched (Stiebens et al. 2013; Brothers and Lohmann 2015; Lohmann and Lohmann 2019; Levasseur et al. 2019). The spatial scale of the fidelity pattern to the nesting site may vary among species, populations or individuals (Hart et al. 2013; Esteban et al. 2015; Iverson et al. 2016; Hamilton et al. 2021). On one hand, sea turtles can exhibit nesting site fidelity at fine scale, laying consecutive clutches on the same beach across nesting seasons (Kamel and Mrosovsky 2004; Patrício et al. 2018; Shimada et al. 2021; Heredero Saura et al. 2022). On the other hand, flexible nesting site selection have been observed, as site fidelity may range from 1 to over 100 km for some individuals within the same reproductive season (Tucker 2010; Raposo et al. 2024). It has been hypothesized that dispersed nesting efforts may counteract the effect of spatially restricted reproductive failures that may occur at specific locations (Bowen et al. 1989; Refsnider and Janzen 2010). In some cases, nesting site plasticity can strengthen the ability to cope with the loss or degradation of nesting areas through the colonization of new ones (Esteban et al. 2017; Raposo et al. 2024; Luna-Ortiz et al. 2024). Despite philopatric behaviors, females appear to select specific nesting habitats to some extent (Dodd 1988; Hays and Speakman 1993), supposedly laying eggs on beaches that improve their reproductive success (Tucker 2010). This plasticity can be locally influenced by environmental characteristics (Siqueira-Silva et al. 2020), as several parameters relative to anthropogenic activities (Salmon et al. 1995; Allen 2007; Costa et al. 2023) and to the geomorphology of the nesting habitat (Karavas et al. 2005; Margaritoulis 2005; Read et al. 2019a) have been reported to affect nesting site selection. In a context where many sea turtle populations are declining (Casale and Tucker 2017; Seminoff 2023; Wallace et al. 2023), generating knowledge over the most important nesting areas and the underlying environmental, ecological and cultural drivers influencing nesting site selection is essential to the implementation of efficient long-term management strategies (Siqueira-Silva et al. 2020).
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