Turtles play a critical ecological role in the environments in which they occur. For example, freshwater turtles help control aquatic vegetation, serve as scavengers and help maintain rivers and lakes in a healthy condition. In addition, turtles occupy a significant role in the cultures of many people around the world.
How are turtles important to the ecosystem?
Turtles and their eggs are important prey to a wide variety of predators. These reptiles graze, they dig burrows, they disperse seeds, they create and modify habitats, and they affect food webs and mineral cycling.
What would happen if green turtles went extinct?
If sea turtles went extinct, dune vegetation would lose a major source of nutrients and would not be as healthy and would not be strong enough to maintain the dunes, resulting in increased erosion. Once again, all parts of an ecosystem are important, if you lose one, the rest will eventually follow.
What is a turtle’s ecosystem?
Sea turtles live in almost every ocean basin throughout the world, nesting on tropical and subtropical beaches. … The juvenile turtles spend their first few years in the open oceans, eventually moving to protected bays, estuaries, and other nearshore waters as adults.
Why are turtles and tortoises important to the environment?
Turtles also regulate the energy flow of a given environment. Turtles redistribute energy in multiple ways, such as by being a food source for predators. In addition to being prey themselves, their eggs are food for many animals. … Turtles are also important consumers.
Why are turtles important to Aboriginal culture?
Turtles are a favoured food source for Indigenous communities and therefore appear as totems and in Dreamtime stories and Creation myths. Indigenous people respect the food resources that sustain them and they celebrate the turtle in rituals that aim to increase the bounty of the species.