I studied the common musk turtle (Sternotherus odoratus) at the northern limit of its range at Norway Bay, Quebec, from April to October 2006. Common musk turtles are habitat specialists and are selective of their habitats at the study-area and home-range scales. Beaver ( Castor canadensis) lodges were preferred at the study-area scale. Common musk turtles also preferred beaver lodges, emergent wetlands, aquatic beds with floating and submerged vegetation as well as rocky shores at the home-range scale. At the location scale, common musk turtles chose shallower and cooler sites that contained more logs and submerged vegetation than the sites available at random. There was no significant effect of sex on habitat use at the location scale. There was no significant difference in mean daily movements between the sexes during the active season. However, sex and month probably interact together to influence the mean distance traveled daily by common musk turtles in Norway Bay. Males appeared to move more than females in May, July, and October. Females appeared to move more daily than males in August and September. Neither sex appeared to move more daily in June. However, our small sample size did not allow us to conduct a conclusive analysis. The mean home-range area was 23.9 ha and was not different between sexes. I estimated a density of 4.1 turtles/ha and a sex ratio of 1.7M: 1F. The population includes 59.6% males, 35.8% females, and 4.6% juveniles. Adults ranged from 77 mm to 133 mm in carapace length.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.112379 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Belleau, Pascale. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Natural Resource Sciences.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002710939, proquestno: AAIMR51069, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.0025 seconds