Researcher try to answer question: “When do box turtles come out of winter dormancy and what causes them to come out?” - via Herp Digest

By Dede Bile, Aiken Standard, 6/5/17

For nearly 30 years, Eastern box turtles living in Aiken Estates and Hitchcock Woods in Aiken have been generating data for scientific research.

On their shells, they wear radio transmitters, which allow Dr. Lehr Brisbin and his colleagues at the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory to keep track of where the turtles roam and where they settle down when they enter winter dormancy, which also is known as hibernation.

Brisbin has been monitoring one of the reptiles, named The Parson, since 1989.

Information about The Parson and 22 other box turtles appeared recently in a paper published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology.

Brisbin, who is a senior research ecologist emeritus at the Ecology Lab, was one of the paper’s authors. The others were Dr. Brett DeGregorio, Dr. Tracey Tuberville, Robert Kennamer and Bess Harris.

“Our questions were when do box turtles come out of winter dormancy and what causes them to come out?” Brisbin said. “Does it depend on whether they live in a backyard or the woods? Does it depend on whether they are male or female? Does it depend on whether the winter is warm or cool?”

The authors looked at facts and figures that had been compiled from 1990 to 2007. And what they discovered was a bit surprising.

“There was no extremely strong trigger that just told all the turtles to emerge at once,” said DeGregorio, who was the paper’s lead author.

Instead, the scientists found that the animals had two different emergence strategies.

“Some of them were risk-averse, so they didn’t really want to come out early in the spring and take a chance because there might be another cold snap,” said DeGregorio, who now works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Illinois.

 “Others were risk takers that were willing to come out as soon as they saw the first sign of spring and take advantage of the extra time to forage and find a mate.”

Brisbin likes to call the two groups “early risers” and “late risers.” He believes that their different strategies help explain why box turtles have been around for millions of years while other animals have become extinct.

“It looks like box turtles have got it all figured out,” Brisbin said. “No matter what the climate is, there is somebody that is going to make it. I would suggest that they are going to be able to survive global warming.”

In another scientific paper published in 2008, Brisbin, Kennamer and their co-authors reported that the survival rates for adult box turtles living in a suburban neighborhood and an urban forest didn’t differ greatly from those for turtles living in more natural habitats.

Brisbin, 77, is continuing to track The Parson and another box turtle named Dora locally. He also has made arrangements for several turtles to be monitored in Laurens County.

Box turtles in St. Louis area get health checkup- via Herp Digest

Friday, June 22, 2012, by Blythe Bernhard/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

St. Louis, — Which are healthier, city turtles or country turtles? Researchers at the St. Louis Zoo and Washington University are tracking 20 box turtles in their natural habitats, half in Forest Park in west St. Louis, and half in the Tyson Research Center in rural St. Louis County to find out.

Veterinarians and scientists started following the turtles' movements and taking blood samples in the spring as the reptiles emerged from hibernation. It's unknown how many box turtles live in the area, although they are native to Missouri.

The Box Turtle Project grew from a passion for the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands, located off the Pacific coast of Ecuador, where Dr. Sharon Deem and her husband, biologist Stephen Blake, have spent years on research studies.

Two years ago, the couple visited some friends in St. Louis who kept a turtle in their bathroom that they had "rescued" from Forest Park.

"We realized this must happen a lot to box turtles that are native to Forest Park and Missouri and maybe not taken care of properly," said Deem, director of the zoo's Institute for Conservation Medicine.

Deem grew curious about the lifestyle of the local turtles, which she said "can be a good indicator of ecosystems and used as sentinels because they are one of a few species that live on oceans, rivers and land. It seemed like very little work had been done with our turtles here in the Midwest to understand their conservation and health status."

Deem was especially interested to learn whether the box turtle populations here were contracting diseases seen in reptiles on the East Coast. Other threats to the turtles' habitat include cars, development and predatory animals.

The researchers hope to learn more about the turtles' stress levels by monitoring their hormones and measuring for toxin exposures, including pesticides. Researchers are curious whether the stress hormones are higher in turtles who live near golf courses or heavily trafficked areas versus more rural or wooded areas. The results can then indicate any environmental threats to watch out for in other animals and people.

At least once a week the researchers find the 20 turtles with radio tracking devices that receive signals from tags fitted on the turtles' shells. In one case, they learned that a turtle at Tyson Research Center, named Queen Mum, had moved half a kilometer in eight days toward a river basin where they think she wants to lay her eggs.

The researchers were helped Wednesday by fifth- and sixth-grade students from the Eco Club at South City Preparatory Academy, a year-round charter school in St. Louis. The students listened for beeps transmitted by the turtles' tags and trekked through wooded areas of Forest Park before spotting several turtles, including one that had not been tagged.

The education component of the project is aimed at exposing kids to nature to inspire them to be good stewards.

"For the majority of them, the great outdoors is Tower Grove Park," said their science teacher, Michelle Keeter. "In terms of understanding how their actions are impacting their environment, it's a leap they can't make unless they experience it."

The students helped identify the turtles' genders — males have bright, reddish eyes, and females have brown eyes. They learned the proper names for the reptiles' anatomy, such as carapace for the upper shell and plastron for the lower shell. When the turtles were spotted, the younger students watched as interns measured and weighed the animals.

"I like going on adventures," said Micah Braboy, 11, while on the hunt for Jewel, the turtle named for the park's Jewel Box. "I don't like to sit all day."

Amelia Broussard got credit for spotting the 6-inch-wide Jewel, who had blended in with the leaves and branches.

"I just looked down, and it was right there," she said.

The research project is funded with $10,000 from the zoo's conservation programs. Deem said they hope to raise more money to expand the program to include more turtles and to outfit them with GPS tracking devices that can download data directly to a computer.

In Forest Park, the turtles prefer to hang out in Kennedy Forest, a forest in the southwest corner of the park, and in the prairie river area. They move around more during the cooler hours of mornings and evenings.

While the turtles are not endangered, people who have lived around St. Louis for many years have noticed a decline in spotting the creatures wandering around neighborhoods, Deem said.

When turtles are spotted, people should be careful not to touch them unless it's to move them to the side of the road. Deem hopes the turtles can serve as our ambassadors to nature.

"I haven't met one person who doesn't like turtles," she said.

Deadly ranavirus hits box turtles, tadpoles in Montgomery County, Maryland (via Herp Digest)

By Katherine Shaver, 2/12/12, Washington Post

Maryland biologists study­ing box turtles rescued from the bulldozers on the Intercounty Connector construction site have made a grisly find: An alarming number of the tiny turtles later died, and biologists say their demise appears to be unrelated to the highway.

Worse yet, the cause of their death - an animal disease called ranavirus taking root across the United States - also is believed to have killed nearly every tadpole and young salamander in the study area in Montgomery County's North Branch Stream Valley Park since spring 2010.

The discoveries have alarmed state wildlife officials and biologists, who worry about how far ranavirus has spread, how widely it has affected the ecosystem, and how it apparently jumped between turtles - which are reptiles - and amphibians. If the virus spreads or goes unchecked for long, wildlife experts say, it could devastate some local populations of box turtles, frogs and salamanders. That loss, biologists say, would ripple along the food chain to other animals.

In all, 31 adult turtles were found dead near the ICC construction site between 2008 and 2011. Three had been hit by cars or construction equipment. The rest, apparently dead from illness, amounted to about one-quarter of the turtles monitored by Towson University researchers via radio transponders glued atop the tiny shells. Twenty-six of the deaths resulted from suspected or confirmed cases of ranavirus, which left some turtles gasping for breath as they gradually suffocated in their own mucus, researchers said.

"Finding even one dead turtle is unusual," said Richard Seigel, the Towson biology professor who led the ICC study. "Finding over 27 dead turtles in a two-to-three-year period was bizarre."
Box turtles can live 50 years or more in the wild. The ability of their hard shells to withstand predators usually affords them a 98 percent survival rate from one year to the next before they die of old age, usually alone and undetected beneath brush, Seigel said.

"This is a major concern to see these emerging pathogens," he said.

Ecological implications

Experts on animal diseases say ranavirus, whose origin is unknown, has never been detected in humans, livestock or common household pets because it cannot survive in mammals' relatively warm bodies.

Its long-term effects on local turtles, frogs and salamanders are not yet known and will depend on how long the virus lingers, how far it spreads and how quickly surviving animals build up immunity, biologists said. But several wildlife experts said the disease's short-term effects are probably affecting the food chain in the ICC study area between Muncaster Mill Road and Emory Lane, just west of Georgia Avenue in northern Silver Spring.

The birds, snakes and raccoons that dine on salamanders and tadpoles have less food at their disposal, experts say.

Meanwhile, the loss of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tadpoles and salamander larvae wiped out in two consecutive breeding seasons has probably left far more of the insects that young salamanders and frogs eat.

"What is the ecological significance of a virus that can kill every one of an animal's offspring? The implications of that baffle me," said David Green, a veterinary pathologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.

Wildlife experts say they're also concerned that the sudden appearance of ranavirus, a disease that some believe has been lurking in the United States for a century, might signal that local ponds and wetlands are becoming more susceptible to disease under the stresses of climate change, pollution and development.

"Amphibians are very good indicators of the health of our ecosystem," said Scott Smith, a wildlife ecologist for Maryland's Department of Natural Resources. "When we see things happen to them, it means our environment is unhealthy."

Green, the veterinary pathologist, said ranavirus causes measles-like or severe herpes-like symptoms. Often, turtles discharge mucus from their eyes and noses. He said the virus damages their skin, palate, esophagus, stomach, liver, spleen and blood vessels. ICC researchers said they found some turtles dead within four days of their first symptoms.

The ICC tadpoles and young salamanders became sluggish and were seen swimming off-kilter before bleeding into the skin of their bellies, thighs and feet.

"It's a really, really, really horrible disease," Seigel said.

Confirmed cases
Ranavirus, first identified in the United States in 1968, has been suspected or confirmed in turtle and amphibian deaths in 29 states 71 times since 1997, according to the USGS, which tracks animal diseases at its National Wildlife Health Center.

Maryland's first confirmed case came in 2005, when it and the Chytrid fungus killed more than 2,000 young wood frogs and spotted salamanders near Montgomery's portion of the C&O Canal, Smith said. Since 2000, ranavirus has been confirmed in Anne Arundel, Prince George's and Baltimore counties.
Virginia's only confirmed outbreak hit in 2003, when ranavirus killed 20 Southern leopard frogs in the Virginia Beach area, according to the USGS. No cases have been reported in the District.

Ken Ferebee, a National Park Service wildlife specialist in the city's Rock Creek Park, said he's seen no signs of the disease in the box turtles and pond life that he monitors about 12 miles south of the Montgomery outbreak area. He said he hopes box turtles' slow pace and propensity to stick close to home will keep the disease contained near the ICC.

"I don't think it's something we can stop," Ferebee said. "If we find it in the park, it will probably be way too late."

'Devastating impacts'
The Towson University findings, which are just beginning to circulate among biologists in the Northeast, stemmed from a $300,000 state-funded study of how to best save the turtles that, unlike deer and foxes, needed help to escape 18 miles of woods and wetlands ahead of the bulldozers. A team of Towson students attached radio transmitters to 123 of the more than 900 turtles rescued, allowing them to track the animals' every move.

The idea was to study whether the turtles fared better by being relocated about six miles away or to an adjacent area separated from the construction site by a fence. The study was considered potentially important to highway agencies and developers across the country, who are under pressure to reduce the environmental effects of road and building construction.

Rob Shreeve, the Maryland State Highway Administration's ICC environmental manager, said the study was helpful in concluding that the turtles' survival rates - even with ranavirus - were about the same even when they were moved to different locations with similar living conditions.

Seigel, the Towson researcher, said he has no data to show that turtles that were moved from the ICC's path started the outbreak or were more susceptible to illness. He said his team checked the turtles' mouths, eyes, noses and weight to make sure they were healthy before moving them.

The ranavirus death rate in turtles that were moved from the ICC site was roughly the same as the mortality rate in a control group of turtles that already lived in the area and never relocated, Seigel said. The apparently fast-acting virus didn't begin affecting any of the turtles until about 18 months after the ICC animals were moved, making it less likely that the relocation was at the source, he said.

Smith of the Natural Resources Department said state wildlife officials are so concerned that they have applied for research funding from the Association of Reptile and Amphibian Veterinarians. State budgets are too strapped to fund the necessary research, he said.

Scott Farnsworth, Seigel's graduate research assistant on the ICC study, said he's less worried about the local amphibian population's ability to recover because frogs and salamanders begin breeding when they're a few years old and each lay hundreds of eggs. If the virus dies off soon, he said, the overall population could bounce back relatively quickly.

But the population of tiny box turtles, most so small that they fit in the palm of a hand, isn't as resilient, he said. Box turtles don't breed until they reach 10 to 15 years old and females typically lay only eight to 10 eggs per year, he said. That means it wouldn't take as long for a virus killing off reproductive adults to send the species into a steep decline.

"If it's chronic, it could have devastating impacts on the turtle population," Farnsworth said. "It could take decades for them to recover from it, if they do recover."