This web site is a work always under construction, and originated for my own use to visualize the travels of individual turtles over the years. It displays, using many aerial photos, maps, and charts, the data and observations of a multi-year study of an Eastern Box Turtle population in the mountains of southwest Virginia. This study has been 100% funded by the researcher. There are no published papers specific to this study to date, but several papers using data and observations from this study have been published and links are included on this web site.
This web site was never meant to be viewed from beginning to end, but there should be something for everyone interested in Box turtles. Kids should take a look at the "Turtle Catalog" page.
Comments, questions, additions, and corrections are welcome.
ABSTRACT
This is a long term, multi-year study of a single local population of Eastern Box Turtles in southwestern Virginia.
This study started out to document the population density and individual's home range size and habitat characteristics of Eastern Box turtles located within this high elevation mountainous site. But the initial intentions of this study rapidly evolved, first into detailed travel and "activity area" information and road crossing behavior, and finally into meeting behavior, population residency and gene flow. One of the most important questions this study would like to eventually solve is "how do Eastern Box turtles find each other in the wild?".
Detailed studies of Box turtles started primarily between the world war years, but 80 years later, modern technology such as GPS, radio telemetry, computers, and aerial photography, combined with old methods such as thread trailing, makes for accurate plotting of turtle travels and documenting and modeling behavior. to be continued later
A Relict Population Doomed To Extinction?
Introduction
continued: under construction
Eastern Box Turtle
Terrapene carolina carolina
