Activity and movement of free-living box turtles are largely independent of ambient and thermal conditions.

Background: Ectotherms are assumed to be strongly influenced by the surrounding ambient and environmental conditions for daily activity and movement. As such, ecological and physiological factors contribute to stimuli influencing navigation, extent of movement, and therefore habitat use. Our study focused on the intensity of activity (from acceleration data) and extent of movement (from GPS and thread trailing data) of Eastern box turtles () in a fragmented landscape near their northern population limit.

Seed dispersal of in the past and the present: Evidence for a generalist evolutionary strategy.

Several North American trees are hypothesized to have lost their co-evolved seed disperser during the late-Pleistocene extinction and are therefore considered anachronistic. We tested this hypothesis for the American persimmon () by studying the effects of gut passage of proposed seed dispersers on seedling survival and growth, natural fruiting characteristics, and modern animal consumption patterns. We tested gut passage effects on persimmon seeds using three native living species, the raccoon (), Virginia opossum (), and coyote (), and two Pleistocene analogs; the Asian elephant () and alpaca ().