Yurii V. Kornilev

Currently conservation and management decisions often require rapid decisions obtained with very limited funds and personnel. Therefore, the use of traditional mark/recapture techniques for population estimation and radio telemetry for gaining insight into animal movements might not be always feasible. Riverine basking turtles such as P. c. suwanniensis are generally easily observable across their habitat, which makes temporary individual marking with water insoluble paint a valuable tool for rapid assessment of the population. Using 50 individually marked adults, I estimated adult population size in three weeks including the original capture time in a 1.7 km stretch of a spring-fed river in North Central Florida. Furthermore, observations suggest that even though individuals might bask on the same logs repeatedly, they are also capable of short-term movements of at least 2 km, a range at least two times larger than previously reported for the species. Suggestions for improvement of the detection and ability to identify individuals should make this method even more successful in the future.
Poster Session: (Student)

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