Gaps in marine turtle research: a 32-year review

Sea turtles are a charismatic group of marine reptiles that are globally distributed, occupy unique ecological niches, and exhibit intra-specific variations in population sizes, reproduction, and morphology. Furthermore, the group is of great interest to conservation, since all seven species are under some threat category at the IUCN Red List. The present study conducted a bibliometric review using The Web of Science© database and the Marine Turtle Newsletter publications to do a gap analysis on marine turtle research over the past 32 years. The selected publications were classified and analyzed in several categories in order to understand the trends and gaps in the field of marine turtle research. Our results showed that the number of publications grew significantly across the decades, but species are not being studied equally. This difference leads us to focus our further analysis on the three less studied species, which showed promising new areas of research. We also discussed why the publications are highly concentrated in developed countries, and possible solutions, which can help developing countries to increase their research profile, since these countries host most sea turtle nesting sites. Finally, we suggested ways to fill other gaps currently present in marine turtle research.
Keywords: bibliometric analysis, conservation, sea turtle, Testudines.