Identifying important sites for biodiversity is vital for conservation and management. However, there is a lack of accessible, easily applied tools that enable practitioners to delineate important sites for highly mobile species using established criteria. We introduce the R package ‘track2KBA’, a tool to identify important sites at the population level using tracking data from individual animals based on three key steps: (a) identifying individual core areas, (b) assessing population‐level representativeness of the sample and (c) quantifying spatial overlap among individuals and scaling up to the population. We describe package functionality and exemplify its application using tracking data from three taxa in contrasting environments: a seal, a marine turtle and a migratory land bird. This tool facilitates the delineation of sites of ecological relevance for diverse taxa and provides output useful for assessing their importance to a population or species, as in the Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) Standard. As such, ‘track2KBA’ can contribute directly to conservation planning at global and regional levels.

Few studies have looked into climate change resilience of populations of wild animals. We use a model higher vertebrate, the green sea turtle, as its life history is fundamentally affected by climatic conditions, including temperature‐dependent sex determination and obligate use of beaches subject to sea level rise (SLR). We use empirical data from a globally important population in West Africa to assess resistance to climate change within a quantitative framework. We project 200 years of primary sex ratios (1900–2100) and create a digital elevation model of the nesting beach to estimate impacts of projected SLR. Primary sex ratio is currently almost balanced, with 52% of hatchlings produced being female. Under IPCC models, we predict: (a) an increase in the proportion of females by 2100 to 76%–93%, but cooler temperatures, both at the end of the nesting season and in shaded areas, will guarantee male hatchling production; (b) IPCC SLR scenarios will lead to 33.4%–43.0% loss of the current nesting area; (c) climate change will contribute to population growth through population feminization, with 32%–64% more nesting females expected by 2120; (d) as incubation temperatures approach lethal levels, however, the population will cease growing and start to decline. Taken together with other factors (degree of foraging plasticity, rookery size and trajectory, and prevailing threats), this nesting population should resist climate change until 2100, and the availability of spatial and temporal microrefugia indicates potential for resilience to predicted impacts, through the evolution of nest site selection or changes in nesting phenology. This represents the most comprehensive assessment to date of climate change resilience of a marine reptile using the most up‐to‐date IPCC models, appraising the impacts of temperature and SLR, integrated with additional ecological and demographic parameters. We suggest this as a framework for other populations, species and taxa.

A global phylogeny for chelonid fibropapilloma-associated herpesvirus (CFPHV), the most likely aetiological agent of fibropapillomatosis (FP) in sea turtles, was inferred, using dated sequences, through Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis and used to estimate the virus evolutionary rate independent of the evolution of the host, and to resolve the phylogenetic positions of new haplotypes from Puerto Rico and the Gulf of Guinea. Four phylogeographical groups were identified: eastern Pacific, western Atlantic/eastern Caribbean, mid-west Pacific and Atlantic. The latter comprises the Gulf of Guinea and Puerto Rico, suggesting recent virus gene flow between these two regions. One virus haplotype from Florida remained elusive, representing either an independent lineage sharing a common ancestor with all other identified virus variants or an Atlantic representative of the lineage giving rise to the eastern Pacific group. The virus evolutionary rate ranged from 1.62×10⁻⁴to 2.22×10⁻⁴substitutions per site per year, which is much faster than what is expected for a herpesvirus. The mean time for the most recent common ancestor of the modern virus variants was estimated at 192.90–429.71 years ago, which, although more recent than previous estimates, still supports an interpretation that the global FP pandemic is not the result of a recent acquisition of a virulence mutation(s). The phylogeographical pattern obtained seems partially to reflect sea turtle movements, whereas altered environments appear to be implicated in current FP outbreaks and in the modern evolutionary history of CFPHV.

Sea turtles are vulnerable to climate change since their reproductive output is influenced by incubating temperatures, with warmer temperatures causing lower hatching success and increased feminization of embryos. Their ability to cope with projected increases in ambient temperatures will depend on their capacity to adapt to shifts in climatic regimes. Here, we assessed the extent to which phenological shifts could mitigate impacts from increases in ambient temperatures (from 1.5 to 3°C in air temperatures and from 1.4 to 2.3°C in sea surface temperatures by 2100 at our sites) on four species of sea turtles, under a “middle of the road” scenario (SSP2‐4.5). Sand temperatures at sea turtle nesting sites are projected to increase from 0.58 to 4.17°C by 2100 and expected shifts in nesting of 26–43 days earlier will not be sufficient to maintain current incubation temperatures at 7 (29%) of our sites, hatching success rates at 10 (42%) of our sites, with current trends in hatchling sex ratio being able to be maintained at half of the sites. We also calculated the phenological shifts that would be required (both backward for an earlier shift in nesting and forward for a later shift) to keep up with present‐day incubation temperatures, hatching success rates, and sex ratios. The required shifts backward in nesting for incubation temperatures ranged from −20 to −191 days, whereas the required shifts forward ranged from +54 to +180 days. However, for half of the sites, no matter the shift the median incubation temperature will always be warmer than the 75th percentile of current ranges. Given that phenological shifts will not be able to ameliorate predicted changes in temperature, hatching success and sex ratio at most sites, turtles may need to use other adaptive responses and/or there is the need to enhance sea turtle resilience to climate warming.