Recent ramblings from the field & lab
Written by Travis M. Thomas
Our Fall sample was interesting to say the least. Water levels were extremely low in our upriver site, but we managed to get traps in. We caught a record number of turtles in our lower river site, and our middle river site was as productive as usual.
Our latest survey for the Cedar Key Mole Skink on barrier islands in the Suwannee Estuary. We searched five islands, and we came up empty handed until the very last island.
Our collegues at Oxford University sent us the first batch of SnapperGPS boards/components. Now, we simply need to put them together and seal them in a waterproof housing. Is there an engineer in the house?
Our summer sampling effort for Suwannee Alligator Snapping turtles in the Suwannee River. It was hot and rainy; we were welcomed by a 8 ft long alligator in one of our traps, but we managed to capture a bunch turtles. In addition, we caught a few turtles that were previously marked in 2011-2012. These long-term recaptures are extremely important and provide some indication that this species has high apparent survival and incredible site fidelity! What a fascinating turtle! Click to read more.
We are pilot testing two modified satellite tags in an attempt to locate Suwannee Alligator Snapping Turtle nesting areas. These state-of-the-art tags are very expensive, but they have enormous potential to uncover some mysteries surrounding where this species nest. If we can find nests, we can study things like clutch size, nest survival, hatching success, hatchling survival, etc. Most of these parameters are educated guesses in our models, so this any information could allow for more robust models.