Growth

The male born in August 2011 is growing nicely. It looks as though new spots are appearing in the growth lines of the carapace, only on the marginal areas. 

Its tail is still very thin and the chin and face are not dark yet.

Although this is a Clemmys blog, today I will post some Testudo hermanni hermanni pictures.
Catalonia has a native population of the western subspecies. It is very protected and it is forbidden to keep Testudo hermanni,  never mind if they have been captive bred and have their CITES or they belong to the other subspecies, Testudo hermanni boettgeri.

The Catalan Environmental Department allows privates to collaborate in a captive breeding program of this species if some requirements (space, climate, security measures...) are achieved.  The CRARC are the ones that inspect the facilities and organize and control the captive breeding program. The animals that privates obtain are used in a reintroduction program in areas from Catalonia where this species lived before. They are not used to reinforce the places where the native species still survive. The CRARC are the ones that run this program, and the ones that organize and control the privates collaboration.
They borrowed me two males and three females, but the idea is to have 2 males and 8 females. They are kept in two separate groups.

Female with balearic fenotype

The key hole spot in V5, characteristic of this subspecies

This female has some pyramiding from previous owner (it could be a decomised animal)

This summer they have layed 2-3 times and the nests had between 4-6 eggs. I didn't notice some nests, but I knew they had layed for palpation. Most nests were in full sun but near the roots of plants and small bushes.

A nest on the top.middle of the picture, the ground with a different color

A picture nearer. The ground in the laying area is "sauló"

Another nest, under my shadow

Picking up the eggs of a nest

To increase the chances of success I incubated the eggs of more or less the half of the nests in a Jaeguer incubator.
For some reason, the eggs incubated naturally failed. The place where I have them falls in the potential natural range for the species, so I thought it was strange.
For comparison all the eggs in the incubator hatched. I know what to do next summer.

You can see the yellow spot on the face, characteristic of this subspecies

They are fed only weeds. This picture if from September the 30th, a very warm September (28ºC at noon)

I bath them so they can hydrate, but in hot days, I sometimes water the area with the goose. And they do the same that they do in a summer thunderstorm in the wild, they quickly drink from the pudles before the water filtrates.

 I will keep them untill they are more than 10 cm., so they pass the most vulnerable years. Then they will be released and they will be exposed to forest fire, predators (specially wild boars), humans... A few of them will reach adulthood, maybe none. 

I know there is a contradicion here. For one side  I keep chelonians for hobby, and this hobby is one of the causes of wild chelonian population depletion. On the other side  I collaborate in a breeding program to help the tortoises in the wild. Contradictory, like human nature. 

Another surprise

There was finally a second clutch of three eggs on July the 10th. I didn't see the turtle nesting, it was next morning when I felt on palpation that she didn't carry the eggs. I looked for the nest and I found it in the place she usually chooses. There were three eggs.

 

And yesterday, on August the 4th, the first clutch eggs  hatched after 50 days at 30ºC.

 

First hatchling with tiny spots

Second hatchling

 

The third hatchling picture was very bad.

 

But this was not the surprise of the day. The susprise was that the same day the female started digging a nest for a third clutch. A clutch in August!

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know why she nested so late. The main difference with previous years it that this July has been cooler and much more rainy than usual, but I don't know if this explains a third clutch.

Could it be that I didn't notice this in previous years?

What I know for sure is that it is fantastic when they do unexpected things. Certainly this is not a boring thing to observe this species behavior.

 

Eggs 2013

This Saturday at  19:39 the female was nesting. I couldn't watch her because I had to leave, but I have some pictures. The temperature was nice, 24ºC, maybe this explains why she was nesting so early (she usually nests at night). Two years ago she also nested in the afternoon.
 The hole was nearly finished, so I guess she started between  18:00 and 19:00.

Next morning you could only see this



At 3 cm the eggs appear. Some years ago I mixed some small size sand with the earth, this helps in the nest excavation.

Two of them were in a nearly vertical position

The hole once emptied. The ground was at 4 cm.

In vermiculite, ready for the incubator. I put them in the same position, but I don't think it happened anything bad if I had put them horizontal.

 

This time there were three eggs. In previous years she had done 4 eggs in the first clutch and 3 eggs in a second clutch. I was expecting this clutch because I palpated the eggs some days ago, but I wonder if it could be a second clutch. I could have missed the first one. In previous years she had nested in May and we are in the second half of June.  I have not palpated her regularly because I didn't want to disturb her too much. So, it could be that there is a first clutch somewhere.

 

The new couple is very shy. The pond is in a very quiet place and instead of becoming tame, they are becoming wild. When I get close to the pond I just see them throwing into the water, just like frogs do.
There is plenty of duckweed in the pond now. It occupies all the surface excepte the moving water created by the aerator.
I have put some fish to avoid mosquitoes. It is not the native mosquitoes that worry me, but a relativelly new mosquito, the "tiger mosquito" from Asia (Aedes albopictus) that came in 2004. This one stings during the day, an important difference with the common mosquito when you want to watch  the turtles . The sting is also more painful and lasts for longer. In other countries it acts as a vector of dangerous human diseases, something that does not happen here fortunately, at least until now. 

 

A green carpet

 

 

 

 

 

 

The few pictures I could take before it hide

 

 

 

The duckweed tells the stone they use for sunbathing

New pond

I haven't written in this blog for some time because I  don't  want it to be repetitive. But some things have happened.  At the end of last summer I bought a new female in poor condition: it was emaciated and stretched its neck to breathe opening the mouth. It had spent months in a basin in a shop. Maybe because of the few spots or because it already looked ill, nobody bought it. And the rest is easy to guess.
It needed forced feeding by esophagic probe, antibiotics and deparasitation and it finally  cured. When it started eating alone again, it was amazing: earthworms, snails and slugs, insects... all went inside.

It only has a tiny spot in each shield. This sober dress is also interesting. And to compensate for the little spots in the carapace, it has two big orange-red marks in the head.


Female with tiny spots

Female's plastron, very dark

I would have put it with the other Clemmys but a friend generously has borrowed me his unpaired male. And if the female looks sober, the male looks festive. In this case it is captive bred.


 

The head and extremities are also very spotted



The typical dark face of males

 I don't want to risk to break the harmony adding another male to the other couple of Clemmys , so, I have put the new couple in a pond in another place.
 



Recently made pond, with the water still murky



I still have to put an aerator and some fish to control mosquitoes

Both are young. The female measures  9,4 cm , the male  8,7. The male has mated with the female more than once. Although I think the female has a size to lay eggs, I don't think it does. I think it needs a summer feeding properly and some adaptation to the pond. If they ever breed, it will be curious to see what is obtained from this cross.

Regarding the other Clemmys, they do what is expected in this season. They mate, they feed and they sunbathe all day. This year and for the first time since I have them, I have witnessed the male trying to mate with the female "in land".

Yesterday I palpated the female and it wasn't carrying eggs yet.
 

This year there are more wall lizards than ever. The combination of sun, water and herbaceous vegetation with many small invertebrates that there is in the pond enclosure provides them most they need. It only lacks, and I am thinking of putting it, a pile of rocks piled against the more sun exposed wall of the house.  In the area where I live there are three other wall lizard species but this is the one that lives in more humanized areas. Watching them is very relaxing for me. They twist their head to assess whether you are a threat but if you move slowly they let you approach to a very close distance.
I have seen them catch caterpillars and other invertebrates, lick the water of the pond, sunbathe and explore the environment  with a combination of small sprints, stops and head movements so characteristic of these lizards.
 

When they hide, if you don't move they come out again , even if you are near them

 I have seen some of them tailess, as this male

These lizards come off the tail with extreme ease.  When they lose it, it makes strong contortions, it looks like it is alive. This distracts  the predator while the lizard escapes. Whenever I see a tailless wall lizard, I think the trick has worked. The tail regenerates..
 

Some males have an orange coloration of the underside of the body, and some blue scales on the sides. However, it is not seen like that by the other lizards. In a conference by the Societat Catalana d'Herpetologia, one speaker made a talk about the color perception of these lizards, which like birds and chelonians, see the ultraviolet light. They just don't see things like we do.
 

And this female looks like it is carrying eggs. Although when they sunbathe they flatten their bodies, this looked the same when it moved around. Hopefully one promise of tiny wall lizards for the month of August.

Hibernacula

I had not seen the turtles since the beginning of December, when I saw them mating in freezing water. Since then, the pond has frozen more than once, but I have not seen them. For me it is a mystery why sometimes the ice seems to activate them and others does not. One difference is that in the last freezing episodes, it was not too cold and the ice was very thin in the morning. Maybe it formed later and it melts sooner. Who knows what will happen next time the pond freezes properly, but I don't dare to say I will see them .

So, with or without ice, I had not seen them until today, when I have discovered where they are hiding. The stay under a cork bark,  at a depth of  30cm, near the roots of a cattail. Both turtles side by side, you can see it with a little imagination in the last picture. 

The cork bark only touches the water by one side, so it forms an air pocket. Although winter can freeze most of the pond, I don't think it happens in the water over the hibernacula, protected but a 4cm thick cork (and I neither think it happened the day they were moving under the ice, so, the passage of  air to the pond was not blocked!). I will check it in the future. I also remembered of a picture I saw in an internet text about this species

http://www.google.es/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bryoecol.mtu.edu%2Fchapters_2011%2F15Reptiles.pdf&ei=-_XJUIboJMPKhAe664CwDw&usg=AFQjCNHa58kQgPVSLFoMNaJ66sXVjwEaSA&sig2=5pUDODVivrRBf1sCXNeAHg&bvm=bv.1355272958,d.d2k

Turtles under the ice and a surprise

I had not seen the turtles since September. I looked at the pond often, but the turtles had disappeared. One curious thing is that last year I used to see them every week in November and even December. Sometimes they sunbathed.  One change that I have noticed since last year is that the bottom of the pond is more colonized by algae and plants, offering plenty of places to hide. The other change is that the male, for some reason, is more persistent in his attempts to mate with the female.

Sunday morning, at 10:00, the grass was frozen. The temperature was -3,2ºC and I felt the cold in my ears.

For the first time in the fall, the pond froze. And I saw the turtles, as it happened other times the pond freezes (see "water depth and August temperatures at different levels  (28-11-11)"; "The turtles and the ice (09-02-12)"   "It happened again (10-02-12)").

The water temperature at 10 cm was 3ºC and at 50 cm 6,6ºC.

Under the log

For some reason, sometimes, when the pond freezes, the turtles become active and I see them near the surface. Curiously I already see them in the early morning, when it is still freezing and there is no direct sunlight on the pond. They remain active until the afternoon, long after the ice has melted.
When they are under the ice they move slowly . They are aware of my presence and if I get too close to them, they hide the head and move away.

The first time that I witnessed it  I thought that the turtle needed to breath air and, impulsively, I broke the ice to examine the animal.  Later I found some papers in internet about metabolic depression at low temperature, non pulmonary respiration and the probable anoxia tolerance of this species  (see: Water quality (05-12-11)). There is a very interesting book about the physiology of turtles where there is plenty of information about it

If the water has normal oxygen levels, this species can remain submerged for months without the need to breath air.

The ice can alter the water oxygen levels as it prevents the passage of this gas from the atmosphere to the water. Could it be that this behavior when there is ice on the surface of the pond is related to the oxygen levels? I wonder how long does is take since the ice forms to have an effect in the water oxygen levels. I supose  it depends on the pond characteristics (water movement, oxygen consumption, oxygen generation...).  Regarding the aquatic plants and algae, I wonder how does the winter affect photosyntesis if it does, as this would alter the oxygen levels during the day and the night. Do the algae generate/consume oxygen in winter? They change to a very dull color and it is not until spring when they become green (and I can see bubbles on their surface).

It could also be that it is not related to the oxygen and they do it for some other reason. In any case I don't read this behavior as a signal that something goes wrong. Even on the assumption that the ice was really decreasing the oxygen levels it wouldn't mean that things were going wrong. According to articles, it is believed that hipoxia or anoxia in the ponds were Clemmys hibernate are not something extraordinary and these animals are adapted to this situation.

It is neither something extraordinary that they are active under the ice. Biologysts have seen wild turtles doing it and other turtle kepers have noticed this behavior in their ponds,  different to mine.

I think the cold tolerance of this species is fascinating and it has disrupted all the schemes that I had about what is hibernation in turtles. And once I have become used to seeing them active in winter and I think they can no longer suprise me, this is what I witness some hours later. It is early December at noon, the air temperature is 6ºC and the water temperature at the turtles level is 3,09ºC. There is still some ice melting.

This is cold tolerance, doing it in 3ºC water!...

Ready for the hibernation

The turtles feel the winter is coming. In September I saw them occasionally. They stopped eating in mid-month. I haven't seen them since then. Maintenance work limits to picking up the leaves that fall on the water.
The hatchlings also remain hidden. Night temperatures are close to the 0ºC, so, I took them out of the tank where I had them to hibernate in a safer place (cold but out of reach of frost). I found all the hatchlings between the roots of  a plant, near the surface.



In the tank, if it was cold enough, frost could reach all the water. They are now in a bucket with little water and algae in a garden shed.





I also weighted and measured them, so, these data are from the first week of November 2012

Birth	Length (mm)	Width (mm)	Height (mm)	Weight (g)
August 2011	44,58	41,32	15,47	13
August 2012	33,24	31,23	12,14	6
August 2012	31,65	31,24	12,2	6
August 2012	30,85	29,51	11,07	5
August 2012	32,92	31,26	12,11	6
August 2012	32,58	30,9	12,44	5
August 2012	31,43	29,52	12,42	5
Sept. 2012	27,8	26,41	11,85	4

I am planning to build a new pond for the male. He chases the female whenever he sees her. I think this could be stressful for her, and I don't think this is a normal situation in the wild. In the books they say this species uses different ponds in different seasons. In spring they leave the waters where they have been hibernating and migrate to ponds. These congregation of animals in the same pond are useful in the mating season, when the sexes meet easily. Later, in the laying season, the animals would disperse.
I guess that once the animal have dispersed , males  chasing females would be only occasional, when they met casually. So, I think the best option would be to have a pond for the male and a pond for the female. Probably in the female's pond there could be more than one female. In the male's pond there should be only one male. In spring I would put the male with the female until the laying season.

This November two herpetological conferences will take place in Spain:

The one of the Societat Catalana d'Herpetologia (SCH) about reptiles and amphibians

http://soccatherp.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/jornades-herpetolc3b2giques2.pdf

And the one of the Sociedad Herpetológica Valenciana (SOHEVA) about chelonians

http://www.soheva.org/2012/10/14/soheva-organiza-una-nueva-jornada-sobre-quelonios/