Abstract

The hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) is one of the endangered species of sea turtles. In this work, we propose a mechanistic approach, structurally simple but strong in its semantic analysis, to project a compartmental and discrete mathematical model for analyzing the impact of anthropogenic factors, such as accidental fishing, plastic pollution, and global warming, on the abundance of the population. The dynamics of an abundant population is defined by a recurrence with a delay that relates the number of eclosion eggs to the size of the adult group, with mature males and females separated and their counts entering the reproductive cycle. A key result is the numerical evidence of sensitivity of abundance (extinction or subsistence) to the parameter representing the fraction of hatched male eggs, considering that this species exhibits philopatry and temperature-dependent sex determination, critical factors in an environment of climate change. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.