Nesting and early life is a period of high mortality for many turtle species, so understanding how turtles select nest sites, and how those nest sites impact hatching success, may be important for successful species conservation. In this research, my objective was to 1) understand how the environment around potential nest sites (canopy, understory, and soil) influences gopher tortoise nest-site selection at burrows and 2) how that nest environment both directly (nest microclimate: temperature and moisture) and indirectly (nest characteristics: nest depth, distance from burrow, canopy and understory cover, percent clay in soil, and lay date) affects hatching success in naturally incubated tortoise nests. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, I conducted repeated searches at burrows to locate nests at the Jones Center at Ichauway and the Greenwood Ecological Reserve in southwestern Georgia. I collected soil samples, measured canopy and ground cover at gopher tortoise nest locations (n=132) and an equal number of comparison non-nest burrows. At nest sites, I also monitored temperature and moisture throughout incubation. To evaluate nest-site selection, I compared burrows with and without nests using multiple logistic regression to create a suite of five biologically relevant candidate models and compared models with Akaike's Information Criterion adjusted for small sample sizes. The top three models identified canopy cover and understory vegetation cover as the only significant predictors of nest presence at burrows, with tortoises in the sites nesting at burrows with lower understory and canopy cover. Furthermore, there was an interaction between the understory vegetation and canopy cover effects, where the effect of understory cover decreased as canopy cover increased. This suggests that the vegetation effect may be primarily driven by an avoidance of shade, whereby nests laid in burrows with high canopy cover were so shaded that understory vegetation had a weaker influence on nest-site selection. When tortoises nested in burrows with lower canopy cover, which was far more common than high canopy cover at our sites, they also avoided understory vegetation so that nest sites were least shaded. These results suggest that maintaining habitats with very open overstories may be most important for allowing gopher tortoises access to preferred nest sites. To quantify the direct and indirect effects of nest environment on hatching success, I built a structural equation model (SEM) in a Bayesian framework in which hatching success was affected by nest temperature and moisture, which were themselves affected by nest site characteristics. I found that nest microclimate could be predicted moderately well from characteristics of the nest environment (R2=0.25-0.49), with lay date influencing both temperature and moisture, vegetation affecting temperature, nest position influencing moisture and temperature variability, and percent clay in soil influencing moisture. Hatching success was highest at lower mean temperatures and moistures and at intermediate levels of temperature and moisture variability, but the ability of this model to predict hatching success was low (R2=0.10). I observed very high hatching success (87.5%) and, thus, eggs were generally receiving the conditions they needed to successfully develop and there was not much variation in hatching success to explain. This framework may be useful for investigating environmental causes of lower hatching success at less robust tortoise populations that may be experiencing low rates of natural hatching success. / Master of Science / Many turtle species experience high rates of mortality in early life, so understanding how turtles select areas to nest, and how those places impact hatching success, may be important for successful species conservation. In this research, my objective was to 1) understand how the environment around potential nest locations (vegetation and soil) influences where gopher tortoise place nests at burrows and 2) how the conditions of that nest location both directly and indirectly affect hatching success in natural gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) nests. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, I conducted repeated searches at burrows to locate nests at the Jones Center at Ichauway and the Greenwood Ecological Reserve in southwestern Georgia. I collected soil samples, measured canopy and vegetative ground cover at gopher tortoise nest locations and an equal number of burrows without nests. At nest sites, I also monitored temperature and moisture throughout incubation. To evaluate how tortoises chose nest locations, I created models to compare tortoise burrows with nests to burrows that were available for nesting, but where no nest was placed. The top three models identified canopy cover and understory vegetation cover as the only significant predictors of nest presence at burrows, with tortoises in my sites nesting at burrows with lower understory and canopy cover. Furthermore, there was an interaction between the understory vegetation and canopy cover effects, where the effect of understory cover decreased as canopy cover increased. This suggests that the vegetation effect may be primarily driven by an avoidance of shade, whereby nests laid in burrows with high canopy cover were so shaded that understory vegetation had a weaker influence on nest-site selection. When tortoises nested in burrows with lower canopy cover, which was far more common than high canopy cover at my sites, they also avoided understory vegetation so that nest sites were least shaded. These results suggest that maintaining habitats with open overstories may be most important for allowing gopher tortoises access to preferred nest sites. To quantify the direct and indirect effects of nest environment on hatching success, I built a structural equation model (SEM) in which hatching success was predicted by nest temperature and moisture, which were themselves predicted by nest-site characteristics. This allowed me to evaluate both the direct effects of nest temperature and soil and the indirect pathways by which nest environment may be influencing hatching success. I found that nest temperature and moisture could be predicted moderately well from characteristics of the nest environment (R2=0.25-0.49), with the date the nest was laid influencing both temperature and moisture, vegetation around the nest affecting temperature, nest position influencing moisture and temperature variability, and percent clay in soil influencing moisture. Hatching success was highest at lower mean temperatures and moistures and at intermediate levels of temperature and moisture variability, but the ability of this model to predict hatching success was low (R2=0.10). I observed very high hatching success (87.5%) and, thus, eggs were generally receiving the conditions they needed to successfully develop and there was not much variation in hatching success to explain. This framework may be useful for investigating environmental causes of lower hatching success at less robust tortoise populations that may be experiencing low rates of natural hatching success.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/120903 |
| Date | 09 August 2024 |
| Creators | Lawson, Garrett Richard |
| Contributors | Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Hunter, Elizabeth Ann, Haas, Carola A., Smith, Lora L. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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