Transcript for:
Diversity and Adaptations of Marine Reptiles

hi everyone let's go ahead and get started so next in our diversity when we're talking about our marine diversity is we will be focusing on our marine reptiles so we'll be talking about our snakes our sea snakes we'll be talking about our iguanas uh and other types of uh reptiles as well as the uh the the sea turtles as well so let's get started um so your sea snakes and sea crates those are really cool organisms so um here you've got a venomous sea snake on the beach in california whoa so you can see that it's adapted this really cool almost like a fin or a caudal fin back here so really interesting how the sea snakes are able to survive and swim so sea snakes and sea crates are called elapid snakes so in the the family elapidae and they're commonly known as alapids and so they're just a family of venomous snakes and tropical or subtropical regions usually in uh so with terrestrial uh forms in asia australia africa and the americas along with uh marine forms in the pacific and indian oceans so really interesting uh you know there's quite a few different types of snakes they've got their neurotoxins and their venom and some uh can contain other toxic components so there's 56 genera with some uh 360 species and some 170 sub species so lots of different types of snakes and crates and uh let's look into these a little bit so they're relatives of the cobras and the tiger snakes so you'll see the cobra in our cladogram right next door and you'll see the sea crates over here and the sea snakes so really interesting so here you've got about uh sea snakes you've got more than 60 species over here you've only got a small amount of these sea crates over here you can notice they look quite similar themselves and then you've got the asian water snakes more than 30 species here and then you've got these file snakes over here so so notice in the family tree or the phylogenetic tree you know these these alapids right here would be closer related to one another than you know this one over here the file snakes and so on so uh in terms of the sea snakes themselves notice if you look at their family tree here they've got mostly the genus hydrophis hydrophis here and they must surface to breathe and they need they have paddle-like tails like you saw in the previous picture uh most are ovavirus meaning that they are going to develop an egg casing around their embryo but it's going to develop inside their bodies and then most are going to be eating small fishes so really cool this is the yellow bellied sea snake washed up in california during el nino so you can see that it's a very it you know it doesn't look like the friendliest organism out there you can see that there's various types of hydrophis right over here but they they look relatively similar though some have you know this one has a solid line down the back versus this one having more stripes and this one having almost spots and kind of a change in textures here uh and coloration so here's their range so we don't typically see them a whole lot where we're at but maybe they might wash up on shore once in a while here's some beautiful pictures of them uh in the water so they're they're able to get by just fine and these are our reptiles so they're they need to come to the surface still um so the next one the sea crates themselves look quite similar to the sea snakes um and these are in the genus laticauda and those must surface debris they have paddle-like tails most are oviparous meaning they lay their eggs on land and then they're going to be eating mores and conger eels so they're eating quite large organisms here so those are the secrets the venom of these so those are going to be containing two key toxins that bind to postsynaptic receptors for acetylcholine so they can interrupt muscle action needed for respiration so they can cause you to feel like you're choking which is not good all right next we'll talk about the iguana the marine iguana typically the one that's in the galapagos is the the one to you know i i would really love to see these uh but they're endemic to the galapagos islands meaning they're only found here um and those are uh the ones that feed on algae they eat algae but they feed on it under water so they'll actually dive down deep i hope to show you a really cool video on those and they lay their eggs on land so there they are right there on land they the thing about reptiles is that they need to regulate their body temperature so they after they go into the ocean the cold water they need to go back on land to warm back up and there they are underwater just munching on some algae all right next we've got the saltwater crocodiles so the saltwater crocodiles because they're salt water they're going to be ocean related you know not the most fun to have to deal with if you have to do that um but crocodilias uh porosis they they have evolved perhaps 25 million years ago and the males can get up to 20 feet so very large animals here they eat birds fishes mammals and crustaceans and they lay eggs and they guard their nest so there's some some crocodiles right here the salt water crocodile and notice their region here when you're talking about alligators versus crocodiles uh the alligators are going to be more in this region in the the south american region you've got some over here in the u.s so the american alligator you've got the crocodiles in africa india and all over here so there's quite a vast variety of these but you've got the american crocodile nile crocodile quite a few different types of species here cuban crocodile um so they look you know they're they're different species but they more or less look quite uh similar all right next we've got our sea turtles so our sea turtles uh there's quite a few different species of sea turtle but they're very very cool looking and i hope you've all had a chance to at least see what they look like and maybe some of you have seen them in the wild but we've got our green sea turtles our olive ridley sea turtles kemp's ridley uh hawksbill flatback loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles so they look really cool so your green sea turtle looks like this it's got this uh this is typically the one you see most often it's uh it's it's relatively mid-sized and uh then we've got uh these world these nesting sites worldwide where they uh the green turtles will nest but what they'll do is they uh after they give birth or they lay their eggs they're actually going to return to that same so the babies will hatch and they'll return um to lay their eggs on that same exact beach so really interesting the places they go and i was actually almost going to do this uh this sea turtle uh project when i was younger i just graduated from college and i was almost going to go to costa rica to help with sea turtle nesting so with with a little research project over there the olive ridley ones these ones are really interesting looking they almost look like they have black patches over their eyes but you can tell they're quite different in how they look so you can see that they have that really dark and kind of flat or not flat but kind of dome shaped shell right over here but i i tend to think that the they have the really dark spots on their eyes over here that's very significant with their their looks here uh kemp's ridley they look kind of similar to the olive ridley but they don't have those dark spots here here's some little babies some baby sea turtles what they look like and they instinctively will rush toward the sea and they'll make their way out but the problem is that um most of them actually they they the parents put very little or no care into them once they've they've uh laid their eggs and so there's a high mortality rate within the first year of survival for these for the sea turtles and within even the first day right when they first hatch and they go to the beach it's kind of sad um how like what how many predators come and try to take them next you've got the hawksbill turtle no notice it's got a very distinct uh bill right here that looks kind of like a bird's bill right here i would say it looks maybe semi-similar to the green sea turtle but you can see some little subtle differences the flat back over here as the name implies it's got this flat back and not not really very colorful and you can't really see many patterns on it as well the loggerhead is a really cool one i i really like this one this is a little larger of one and you can see the baby form right over here and then the leather back this one to me looks so prehistoric but it's got this uh continuation on its its carapace over here and it's going to uh these are extremely large ones large turtles as well these are very very interesting looking so they give birth on land uh they lay the or sorry not give birth they lay their eggs on land uh then they uh the mothers just go and the the eggs will be fertilized and they will develop and you'll have these large large large scale you know rushes to the ocean and so you can imagine um over here you know the the seagulls and the scavengers and everything will have a field day over here uh these are really cool uh i know it sent it looks a little barbaric but it's it's a tracking device it's being it's uh giving you the ability to tell where these turtles are going you know because they they will go for long periods of time and then return to their nesting site and so it's really interesting to see where they go over time all right um and so these trackers have showed us that you know some of them will start here and they'll go you know to a whole like across an ocean and back some of them will go just up and back and so these are for the the leatherback turtles over here uh so in terms of their their vulnerability the green serie turtle is endangered um the kemp's really is critically endangered i really haven't heard much about the kemp's ridley themselves uh the hawksbill critically endangered the i i don't know much about the the flatback itself but this this vulnerable is actually a good sign that the leatherback is only vulnerable um and so the critically endangered ones are the ones to be most careful all right so those are our uh our marine reptiles there so there's a few there but um it's really interesting to to learn about all of them so i hope that helped