Home range of three turtle species in Central Yucatan. A comparative study.

Home range is a fundamental characteristic of an animal natural history. The study of home range provides information on the sites where organisms forage for food, find shelter, or locate mates. Home range size and shape can change throughout the lifespan of an organism, during the year, or across seasons, driven by resource availability and the basic needs for each organism.

Assessing genomic and ecological differentiation among subspecies of the rough-footed mud turtle, Kinosternon hirtipes.

Combining genetic and ecological measures of differentiation can provide compelling evidence for ecological and genetic divergence among lineages. The rough-footed mud turtle, Kinosternon hirtipes, is distributed from the Trans-Pecos region of Texas to the highlands of Central Mexico and contains 6 described subspecies, 5 of which are extant. We use ddRAD sequencing and species distribution models to assess levels of ecological and genetic differentiation among these subspecies.

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project.

The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.

Evidence for the morphological constraint hypothesis and optimal offspring size theory in the Mexican mud turtle (Kinosternon integrum).

Optimal offspring size theory states that natural selection should balance reproductive output by optimizing between offspring size and offspring number. If a species has evolved an optimal offspring size, the fitness of larger females should be increased by simply producing more offspring of an optimum size. In contrast, when offspring size is not optimized, the morphological constraint hypothesis may apply, and in this case, maternal fitness is increased by producing the greatest number of the largest offspring that mothers are physically capable of producing.