{"id":9095,"date":"2011-05-09T12:54:45","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T17:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=9095"},"modified":"2011-05-09T12:54:45","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T17:54:45","slug":"spotted-turtle-pair-in-mating-aggregation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=9095","title":{"rendered":"Spotted Turtle Pair in Mating Aggregation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spotted<\/a><\/p>\n

Female Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Saturday Turtle Journal visited the abandoned Goldwitz cranberry bog in Marion on the SouthCoast of Massachusetts to check on the spotted turtle mating aggregation.\u00c2\u00a0 Sue Wieber Nourse found and captured two mature spotted turtles, both more than 12 years old, a female and a small male.\u00c2\u00a0 Spotted turtles (Clemmys guttata<\/em>) are small aquatic turtles found in shallow wetlands.\u00c2\u00a0 In this area, spotteds are most often observed in April and May when they migrate to mating aggregations.\u00c2\u00a0 Once temperatures rise with the summer, they disappear from sight.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0\"spotted<\/a><\/p>\n

Spotted Turtle Pair (Female Left) Carapaces<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The male spotted was a very tiny adult as you can detect from these two comparison photographs.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet, he was a great deal bolder than the female, which remained for the most part tucked inside her shell.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0\"spotted<\/a><\/p>\n

Spotted Turtle Pair (Female Left) Plastrons<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Looking at their respective plastrons, you can easily see the gender difference.\u00c2\u00a0 The female has a flat pastron on the left, and the male has a concavity behind the bridge.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The male is also showing his thicker and longer tail.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0\"spotted<\/a><\/p>\n

Female Spotted Turtle Injured Right Rear Limb<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This female spotted had sustained a severe injury to her right rear.\u00c2\u00a0 A large chip had broken off her right rear marginal scutes and a significant portion of her right rear limb had been snipped off.\u00c2\u00a0 These signs point to an encounter with a vehicle that ran over this section of the shell and pinched her leg off.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s fairly amazing because the abandoned Goldwitz bog lies a good distance, a half mile, from the nearest\u00c2\u00a0public road.\u00c2\u00a0 You would think they would be safe from such accidents.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, these wetland are frequented by speeding ATVs\u00c2\u00a0that race along the bog channel service roads.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Spotted Turtle Pair Released Back into Bog<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After we had measured, weighed and marked these two individuals, neither of which had been seen during our half decade study of this system, Don Lewis released them back into the bog channel that hosts the spring mating aggregation each May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Female Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata) Saturday Turtle Journal visited the abandoned Goldwitz cranberry bog in Marion on the SouthCoast of Massachusetts to check on the spotted turtle mating aggregation.\u00c2\u00a0 Sue Wieber Nourse found and captured two mature spotted turtles, both more than 12 years old, a female and a small male.\u00c2\u00a0 Spotted turtles (Clemmys guttata) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9095"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9095"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9119,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9095\/revisions\/9119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}