Journal article
Evidence for Nest-Site Fidelity but Not Natal Homing in Bog Turtles (Glyptemys muhlenbergii)
JOURNAL OF HERPETOLOGY, v 54(3), pp 317-324
Sep 2020
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
To mitigate habitat loss and increase the reproductive success of threatened Bog Turtles (Glyptemys muhlenbergii), managers often improve or restore open-canopy nesting habitats within or adjacent to occupied habitat. Restoring nesting habitat, however, does not guarantee that Bog Turtles will use these restored habitats; inertial mechanisms such as nest-site fidelity and natal homing may prevent female Bog Turtles from discovering and using restored habitats for many years or even generations. The objective of this study was to improve understanding of the role behavioral inertia may play in female Bog Turtle nest-site selection. From 2008 to 2012, at nine fens in New York and Massachusetts, we compared the average distance between previous and subsequent nests with null distributions assuming no nest-site fidelity. We also assessed whether pairwise genetic relatedness of nesting females was positively associated with geographic distance between nests. We found evidence for strong but incomplete fidelity to nesting-habitat patches within a wetland, likely driven by behavioral inertia. Individuals nesting closer together were not more closely related, and first-degree female relatives did not consistently nest within the same nesting-habitat patch, suggesting that Bog Turtles do not exhibit natal homing. Our results suggest that Bog Turtle populations may be slow to respond to newly restored nesting areas because of behavior inertia. However, testing this hypothesis will require long-term monitoring of habitat-restoration efforts coupled with further investigations of Bog Turtle nest-site selection.
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Details
- Title
- Evidence for Nest-Site Fidelity but Not Natal Homing in Bog Turtles (Glyptemys muhlenbergii)
- Publication Details
- JOURNAL OF HERPETOLOGY, v 54(3), pp 317-324
- Publisher
- SOC STUDY AMPHIBIANS REPTILES; ST LOUIS
- Number of pages
- 0
- Grant note
- We thank J. Tesauro, A. Sirois, A. Whitlock, A. Myers, M. TerAvest, A. Krofta, S. Lauricella, and B. Raphael for invaluable assistance and support in the field. We also thank J. Tesauro, C. Zimmerman, A. Breisch, J. Jaycox, and The Nature Conservancy for having the foresight to establish long-term field data collection efforts at our study sites. We thank G. Amato, S. Gaughran, and R. Hersch for support in the American Museum of Natural History's Sackler Institute of Comparative Genomics. We appreciate the review of previous drafts of this manuscript by A. Tuininga, E. Hekkala, J. Wehr, R. Zappalorti, and one anonymous reviewer. All research activities were completed under New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Endangered/Threatened Species Scientific Licenses 195 and 225 and Fordham University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approval (Protocol C-10-06r-b). Generous support was given by Fordham University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Clare Boothe Luce Foundation, Sigma Xi, and American Museum of Natural History's Science Research Mentoring Program, which was supported by the National Science Foundation Award 0833537, Christopher C. Davis, The Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund, The Pinkerton Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Solon E. Summerfield Foundation, Inc., and the Adolph and Ruth Schnurmacher Foundation.
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Drexel University
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000589893000007
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85095997173
- Other Identifier
- 991021860774304721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Zoology