Nesting Site and Hatching Success ofPodocnemis unifilis(Testudines: Podocnemididae) in a Floodplain Area in Lower Amazon River, Pará, Brazil

Nest-Site Characteristics ofGlyptemys muhlenbergii(Bog Turtle) in New Jersey and Pennsylvania

“…The post-ovipositional environment has the potential to affect a number of key aspects of the life history of turtles: developmental rate and duration; hatchling-turtle sex ratios; and phenotype, growth rate, and survival of hatchlings as reviewed by Wilson (1998) and Lovich et al (2012). As a result, it is expected that nesting turtles would select egg-deposition sites that provide appropriate environmental conditions for hatching success (e.g., solar/thermal exposure and soil-moisture conditions), including protection of eggs and developing embryos from predators (Pignati et al 2013).…”

Nest removal by humans creates an evolutionary trap for Amazonian freshwater turtles

“…() did not report or include the size of the different nesting areas in their analysis, so it is not possible to confirm these results. The vast majority of the nesting areas in our study site are relatively small compared with those of previous studies (Escalona & Fa, ; Pignati et al ., ), therefore we did not find such variation in nest distance to water. Our findings agree with those of previous studies that show P. unifilis do not concentrate their nests at a specific distance from the shore (e.g.…”

“…We demonstrated that nest removal by humans is a major threat to P. unifilis nesting success around sustainable use protected areas. As reported across the species range (Escalona & Fa, ; Caputo, Canestrelli & Boitani, ; Ferreira & Castro, ; Pignati et al ., ), the persistent and ubiquitous removal of eggs by humans (i.e. repeated year on year across nesting areas) is a pattern clearly different to the evolutionary stable fluctuation of egg and juvenile mortality across the decades of female reproduction, for example, due to flooding, which is typically the next major cause of egg loss in P. unifilis along seasonal rivers.…”

“…Nest searching was conducted between October and December 2017 during the nesting season of P. unifilis in the region (Norris, Michalski & Gibbs, 2018b;Norris et al, 2018a). Nesting areas were identified as areas of >5 m 2 of exposed sand and/or fine gravel and sufficiently raised above the river level not to be waterlogged at a depth of 15 cm, a representative depth that females dig when nesting [Supporting Information Figure S1, (Escalona et al, 2009;Pignati et al, 2013;Norris et al, 2018a)]. In all nesting areas, our search for nest sites was done together with the local residents with over 30 years of knowledge on nesting areas (Norris et al, 2018a).…”

Peer Review #2 of "Beyond harm’s reach? Submersion of river turtle nesting areas and implications for restoration actions after Amazon hydropower development (v0.1)"

“…Females are thought to lay eggs once a year, with the timing of nesting synchronized with seasonal periods of low water levels (Ojasti 1996;Vogt 2008). Females can lay nests in a wide variety of substrates (Escalona et al 2009;Foote 1978;Pignati et al 2013), with nesting recorded in pasture (Ramon dos Santos 2013) and even on top of caiman nests (MaffeiI & Da SilveiraII 2013). However, such examples are atypical.…”