Western painted turtle hatchlings overwintering in Manitoba nests

Potential sources of intra-population variation in the overwintering strategy of painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) hatchlings.

Many temperate animals spend half their lives in a non-active, overwintering state, and multiple adaptations have evolved to enable winter survival. One notable vertebrate model is Chrysemys picta, whose hatchlings display dichotomous overwintering strategies: some hatchlings spend their first winter aquatically after nest emergence in the autumn, whereas others overwinter terrestrially within ...

To freeze or not to freeze: adaptations for overwintering by hatchlings of the North American painted turtle.

Many physiologists believe that hatchling painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) provide a remarkable, and possibly unique, example of 'natural freeze-tolerance' in an amniotic vertebrate. However, the concept of natural freeze-tolerance in neonatal painted turtles is based on results from laboratory studies that were not placed in an appropriate ecological context, so the concept is suspect. Indeed...

Western Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta bellii)

Does predator swamping promote synchronous emergence of turtle hatchlings among nests?

The spatial and temporal synchrony observed for many behaviors is often viewed as deriving from selection to swamp predators, ensuring that at least some individual prey survive. However, this adaptive explanation has rarely been put to experimental test. We conducted 2 field experiments to evaluate the importance of alternative mechanisms (predator swamping and prey switching) to explain synch...

Rainfall and Depredation of Nests of the Painted Turtle, Chrysemys picta

—It is commonly thought that predators use olfactory cues to find turtle nests and that these cues are diminished by rainfall. We studied the relationship between rainfall on the date of oviposition and depredation of nests of the Painted Turtle, Chrysemys picta, on a major nesting beach between 1996 and 2003. We analyzed two scenarios: rainfall versus no rainfall on the date of oviposition; an...