Literaturdatenbank
Literaturdatenbank |
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Richard, M. G., Laroque, C. P., & Herman, T. B. (2014). Relating annual increments of the endangered blanding's turtle plastron growth to climate. Ecology and Evolution, (early view).
Added by: Sarina Wunderlich (06 Jul 2014 16:17:16 UTC) |
| Resource type: Journal Article DOI: 10.1002/ece3.1065 BibTeX citation key: Richard2014 View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: Cuora mouhotii, Geoemydidae, Habitat - habitat, Nordamerika - North America, Physiologie - physiology, Schildkröten - turtles + tortoises Creators: Herman, Laroque, Richard Collection: Ecology and Evolution |
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| Abstract |
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This research is the first published study to report a relationship between climate variables and plastron growth increments of turtles, in this case the endangered Nova Scotia Blanding's turtle (Emydoidea blandingii). We used techniques and software common to the discipline of dendrochronology to successfully cross-date our growth increment data series, to detrend and average our series of 80 immature Blanding's turtles into one common chronology, and to seek correlations between the chronology and environmental temperature and precipitation variables. Our cross-dated chronology had a series intercorrelation of 0.441 (above 99% confidence interval), an average mean sensitivity of 0.293, and an average unfiltered autocorrelation of 0.377. Our master chronology represented increments from 1975 to 2007 (33 years), with index values ranging from a low of 0.688 in 2006 to a high of 1.303 in 1977. Univariate climate response function analysis on mean monthly air temperature and precipitation values revealed a positive correlation with the previous year's May temperature and current year's August temperature; a negative correlation with the previous year's October temperature; and no significant correlation with precipitation. These techniques for determining growth increment response to environmental variables should be applicable to other turtle species and merit further exploration.
Added by: Sarina Wunderlich |