Data

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Related Project:

Impacts of Hydrological Restoration on Three Estuarine Communities of the Southwest Florida Coast and on Associated Animal Inhabitants

We worked throughout navigable, mangrove-lined tidal creeks within the BSC complex and conducted all sampling trips around new moons to take advantage of spring tides (i.e., highest high and lowest low tides). Dip netting was most successful during a 2-hour window around both day and evening low tides.

In addition to taking standard morphometric measurements on each turtle and recording a GPS location for each capture and recapture location, we marked each newly captured terrapin in four ways: (1) by notching the marginal scutes in a systematic pattern, (2) by inserting an individually numbered 9-or 10-digit alpha-numeric passively induced transponder (PIT) tag, (3) by taking head-on, dorsal, ventral, and side view photographs for photo-id (with particular emphasis on capturing the unique pattern of each turtle's plastron), and (4) by taking blood samples to be screened for microsatellite DNA markers which resulted in locus-specific scores for each individual. For consistency, K. Hart performed all the notching, PIT tagging, photographing, and blood sampling throughout the study. We used the redundant marking system to ensure no tag loss or errors in identification. We also used strict, consistent protocols to catalog animals so that the possibility of misidentification would be essentially zero. We re-weighed and re-measured recaptured turtles, and released all new turtles after workup at their original capture site and all recaptured turtles at their recapture location. Additionally, we attached radiotransmitters to a subset of females to conduct short-term tracking in the study site. For analyses, we constructed a unique 5-capture history for each of the 300 terrapins from the capture and recapture data collected on each trip. Each capture history consisted of the seen (1) or not seen (0) record of the individual during each of the five sampling periods. We used Program MARK and AIC model selection procedures to derive estimates of survival and capture probability. We used Program JOLLY to estimate abundance.

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