Evaluation of headstarting as a conservation tool to recover Blanding's Turtles (Emydoidea blandingii) in a highly fragmented urban landscape.

Freshwater turtle populations are declining globally as a result of anthropogenic activities. Threats to turtles in urban areas are exacerbated by road mortality and subsidized predators, which can lead to catastrophic shifts in population size and structure. Headstarting is used as a conservation tool to supplement turtle populations that may otherwise face extirpation.

Lost reproductive value reveals a high burden of juvenile road mortality in a long-lived species.

Adult mortality is often the most sensitive vital rate affecting at-risk wildlife populations. Therefore, road ecology studies often focus on adult mortality despite the possibility for roads to be hazardous to juvenile individuals during natal dispersal. Failure to quantify concurrent variation in mortality risk and population sensitivity across demographic states can mislead the efforts to understand and mitigate the effects of population threats.

A systematic review of snake translocations to identify potential tactics for reducing postrelease effects.

Advancements in the field of reintroduction biology are needed, but understanding of how to effectively conduct translocations, particularly with snakes, is lacking. We conducted a systematic review of snake translocation studies to identify potential tactics for reducing postrelease effects. We included studies on intentional, human-mediated, wild-wild, or captive-wild translocations to any location, regardless of motive or number of snakes translocated.

Long-Term Resilience of Primary Sex Ratios in a Species with Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination after Decades of Climate Warming.

AbstractSpecies with environmental sex determination (ESD) have persisted through deep time, despite massive environmental perturbation in the geological record. Understanding how species with temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), a type of ESD, persist through climate change is particularly timely given the current climate crisis, as highly biased sex ratios and extinction are predicted. Since 1982, we have studied primary sex ratios of a reptile with TSD ().

Revisiting Ophidiomycosis (Snake Fungal Disease) After a Decade of Targeted Research.

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are typically characterized by novelty (recent detection) and by increasing incidence, distribution, and/or pathogenicity. Ophidiomycosis, also called snake fungal disease, is caused by the fungus (formerly "). Ophidiomycosis has been characterized as an EID and as a potential threat to populations of Nearctic snakes, sparking over a decade of targeted research.

Road avoidance and its energetic consequences for reptiles.

Roads are one of the most widespread human-caused habitat modifications that can increase wildlife mortality rates and alter behavior. Roads can act as barriers with variable permeability to movement and can increase distances wildlife travel to access habitats. Movement is energetically costly, and avoidance of roads could therefore impact an animal's energy budget.

Impact of natural resource extraction on thermal properties of wood turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) habitat.

One of the main threats to freshwater turtle populations is habitat destruction, which occurs as a result of human activities such as infrastructure development, forestry, aggregate extraction, and agriculture. However, the impacts of these activities on thermoregulatory opportunities for turtles are not well understood. We examined the impacts of forestry and aggregate extraction on thermal characteristics of wood turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) habitat in the Sudbury District, Ontario, by measuring the differences in absolute temperature, thermal landscape structure, and habitat thermal quality among relatively undisturbed sites (N = 2), harvested forestry sites (N = 2), and aggregate pits (N = 2) in 2015.

Extreme thermal fluctuations from climate change unexpectedly accelerate demographic collapse of vertebrates with temperature-dependent sex determination.

Global climate is warming rapidly, threatening vertebrates with temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) by disrupting sex ratios and other traits. Less understood are the effects of increased thermal fluctuations predicted to accompany climate change. Greater fluctuations could accelerate feminization of species that produce females under warmer conditions (further endangering TSD animals), or counter it (reducing extinction risk).

Altered spring phenology of North American freshwater turtles and the importance of representative populations.

Globally, populations of diverse taxa have altered phenology in response to climate change. However, most research has focused on a single population of a given taxon, which may be unrepresentative for comparative analyses, and few long-term studies of phenology in ectothermic amniotes have been published. We test for climate-altered phenology using long-term studies (10-36 years) of nesting behavior in 14 populations representing six genera of freshwater turtles (, , , , , and ).

Phenotypic plasticity of nest timing in a post-glacial landscape: how do reptiles adapt to seasonal time constraints?

Life histories evolve in response to constraints on the time available for growth and development. Nesting date and its plasticity in response to spring temperature may therefore be important components of fitness in oviparous ectotherms near their northern range limit, as reproducing early provides more time for embryos to complete development before winter. We used data collected over several decades to compare air temperature and nest date plasticity in populations of painted turtles and snapping turtles from a relatively warm environment (southeastern Michigan) near the southern extent of the last glacial maximum to a relatively cool environment (central Ontario) near the northern extent of post-glacial recolonization.

Mitigating reptile road mortality: fence failures compromise ecopassage effectiveness.

Roadways pose serious threats to animal populations. The installation of roadway mitigation measures is becoming increasingly common, yet studies that rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of these conservation tools remain rare. A highway expansion project in Ontario, Canada included exclusion fencing and ecopassages as mitigation measures designed to offset detrimental effects to one of the most imperial groups of vertebrates, reptiles.

Potential sources of intra-population variation in the overwintering strategy of painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) hatchlings.

Many temperate animals spend half their lives in a non-active, overwintering state, and multiple adaptations have evolved to enable winter survival. One notable vertebrate model is Chrysemys picta, whose hatchlings display dichotomous overwintering strategies: some hatchlings spend their first winter aquatically after nest emergence in the autumn, whereas others overwinter terrestrially within their natal nest with subsequent emergence in the spring. The occurrence of these strategies varies among populations and temporally within populations; however, factors that determine the strategy employed by a nest in nature are unknown.

A novel technique to measure chronic levels of corticosterone in turtles living around a major roadway.

Conservation biology integrates multiple disciplines to expand the ability to identify threats to populations and develop mitigation for these threats. Road ecology is a branch of conservation biology that examines interactions between wildlife and roadways. Although the direct threats of road mortality and habitat fragmentation posed by roads have received much attention, a clear understanding of the indirect physiological effects of roads on wildlife is lacking.

Clinal variation in body and cell size in a widely distributed vertebrate ectotherm.

Bergmann's rule states that, among conspecific populations, individuals are larger in cooler than in warmer environments as a consequence of selection related to heat conservation. Many of the most comprehensive assessments of Bergmann's rule to date have examined clinal patterns in body size among species assemblages. Our study is a more direct test of Bergmann's rule because we examine the pattern within a single, widely distributed species.