Turtle Life: Part 1 The first year of life for a turtle

Use your imagination for a moment, and put yourself in the shoes (or shell!) of a painted turtle during the first year of life.

Mom is digging you a nest!

The first few weeks of May:  You are a fertilized egg of a turtle, only a few cells big.  You are inside your mother, along with 10 other eggs who will be your brothers or sisters.  Each day, your mother is swimming around the slough, trying to eat as many aquatic insects, carrion, and aquatic vegetation as possible.  She needs this food so that she can supply you with a large amount of nutritious yolk.  This yolk is very important for you, because you will not eat a real meal for about 1 year!  Your mother is also trying to bask in the sunlight as much as possible so she has the energy to dig you a nest, somewhere on land.

May 24:  Today is an important day for you and your siblings. It is sunny, and warm, and mom spends all morning basking.  Around 5pm, she crawls out of the water.  She could crawl out only a few meters, but she doesn’t.  Mom walks out of the water and starts looking for just the right place to nest.  Which place is right?  Well, this is a challenging question!  Raccoons, skunks, foxes and coyotes would love to dig up her nest, and might even try to eat mom if they get the chance- so hopefully she can find a place where you and she can both avoid the predators. 

You and your siblings, buried with care in the nest!

She also needs to be concerned with your development.  She can’t sit on the next like a bird can or protect you from predators, so the only thing she can do is choose a good place.   If its too hot or cold, you won’t ever make it, but she can’t control the weather either.  So she has to choose a nest that will hopefully be the right temperature, but you may be at the mercy of the weather.  Also, if your nest is very warm, you and your siblings will all become sisters.  If your nest is cool, you and your siblings will all become brothers.  Perhaps your nest is in the middle, and you will have some brothers and some sisters!    

The covered up nest- well camouflaged from Raccoons.

Mom chooses a sunny place about 50 meters from the river.  She begins to dig. Your mother has extremely sharp claws and powerful hind legs.  She also has drank a lot of water, which she now releases on the nest as she digs, to help moisten the rock hard soil.  She carefully carves out a cavity about the size of a racquetball, with a narrow opening at the top.  Then, out you come!  You are no longer in your mom, but in the ground.  Your eggs is about the size of a grape, but mostly yolk.  You are still just a few cells large. She carefully packs you in, and covers you up, and crawls back to the water.  Since you are in an egg, and haven’t even developed eyes yet, it is possible you will never ever see your mother, because she is gone and isn’t coming back!  But she has done what she can to give you what you need to survive.  But this is just the beginning of a long year ahead of you!    Find out what happens next?

Turtle Nesting 101

Turtles are oviparous which means that they lay eggs.  Many other animals lay eggs as well, like birds, insects, amphibians, fish and other reptiles.  Whether or not turtles live in the water most of the time, they will lay their eggs on land.  The painted turtles that we study crawl out of the water, dig a shallow nest, lay their eggs, cover up the nest, and leave.  Forever!  That’s right.  After a turtle lays her nest  she never comes back.  So you may think a turtle is a pretty lousy mom.  But that is not so!

Turtle eggs are filled with nutritious yolk that help the baby developing inside grow.  These eggs are very sensitive to their environment- particularly how warm and wet the environment is.  So moms must lay eggs at just the right time, and in just the right place so that the nest is suitable for the developing eggs. 

At Turtle Camp, we monitor where and when turtles nest, and we measure how many eggs are in the nest, and how big each egg is. Over the past 24 years, the earliest date we have recorded a turtle nest was May 21. This year, there have already been 52 nests laid prior to May 21! Depending on where you live, you may have experienced a very warm winter and early spring.  Here at Turtle Camp it was a very warm winter and early spring. This warm winter has already influenced how the turtles are behaving!  Stay tuned to see how nesting continues through the coming weeks.

Turtle Camp 2012! The 25th Year!

What is Turtle Camp?

25 years ago, a PhD student from the University of Chicago was looking for a place to find Painted Turtle eggs for a science experiment.  Somebody suggested heading to a Sand Prairie along the Mississippi River, near Thomson, IL.  As he was camping nearby on a nearby island, he noticed turtles seemed to love nesting right in there in the campsite!  That student was Fred Janzen.  Fred is now a Professor at Iowa State University and we now know that campsite as Turtle Camp.  And every year since that summer, Fred and his students have traveled to the Turtle Camp to research the turtles.

For 6 weeks each May and June, a team of researchers is stationed at Turtle Camp, trying to learn as much about the ecology and evolution of these animals as possible.  The Turtle Camp Research Team has very diverse duties.  On one of the nesting beaches, we walk through every single hour of daylight looking for nesting turtles, and take all sorts of information about each nest.  We also trap turtle swimming around in the river, and learn about those turtles as well.  We visit the Sand Prairie, which is a great habitat for turtle nesting, and for many uncommon reptiles to live (like the Hognose Snake and Ornate Box Turtle).  On top of all this, students have their own research projects going on.  Indeed, Turtle Camp is a busy place for the Turtle researchers. 

Who is the Turtle Camp research team?

Each year the research team is a bit different, and throughout the season different people come and go.  Right now, I am coordinating the research project. I am a PhD student at Iowa State, and  I am working with 3 Iowa State biology students, Jessica, Brooke, and Aubrey. Jessica is from Des Moines, and has been to Turtle Camp for 6 years (longer than I have).  She started coming as a high school student.  Brooke is in her second year at Turtle Camp, and Aubrey in her first. As Turtle Camp proceeds more and different people will be coming through.  Of course, Fred is still the primary Turtle Camp researcher, and is the reason there has been successful research continuing here for so long. 

What to expect by following along?

Over the coming weeks, you will learn that turtles are very fascinating and interesting creatures.  And you will also learn what its like to be a science researcher living in the field, studying animals in their natural habitats.  It will be a fun adventure for us, and I hope you will have a fun following along. 

Turtle Camp Begins!

On Monday we arrived at our Turtle Research site in Thomson, IL.  We will spend the next 6 weeks here doing science research, working mostly with Painted Turtles.  On Day 1 we set up our campsite and gear for the 6 week season, and purchased a lot of supplies and groceries.  Yesterday we set up a lot of turtle traps in the Mississippi River backwaters to try and capture as many turtles as possible.  And we also had our very first turtle nest of the season....  Our internet coverage is rather poor out here, but I will be sending you some videos and more updates soon.

To whet your appetite, check out this longer turtle trapping video from last years Turtle Camp.

Sex-determination explained

Ted ED partnered with Aaron Reedy (of the Lizard Project) to make this great video about the diversity of sex-determining mechanisms.

There is still a lot we don't know about sex-determination as well, which are areas of current and future research.

Food Webs as hypothesis generators

Do you think that a hawk eating a rat could have any influence on the Anoles on our islands?  If you cannot think of a way it could have an influence, take a look at the food web drawn at the right for some ideas.


The student's in Mr. Morris' class have helped me construct a simplified food web for Island M, based on observations we had made on the island or nearby.  Here is a great example of one of the food webs a student constructed based on our observations.  From this drawing, you can see that perhaps the rat population really strongly influences anoles, because they not only directly eat anoles, but compete with them for other food sources.

One thing these webs really help us do is generate hypotheses.  In class tomorrow, students will be coming up with predictions based off of several different scenarios.

A few Lizard Videos

Here are a few last videos from the Lizard Project.  One really clearly shows Dan noosing a lizard, and the other shows how we process (weigh, measure, mark) the lizards.

Lizard Project- Fun with Photography, Thanks to Vincent Musi

Some say that a picture is worth a thousand words.  I think I have never been more in agreement with that statement than after my day yesterday.  Vincent Musi, a world famous photographer, and his family visited us and he took a shot at photographing our lizards.  Vince had wonderful stories about his life as a National Geographic and freelance photographer, and after working with him, it was clear he was a master of his trade. Vince had prepared a wonderful lizard studio, and we spend hours with him working on getting the right lizard poses (which is very hard to do in a very unnatural lizard studio).  After about 6 hours of work, we finally got a lizard to flare his dewlap in just the right place, at just the right time.  Pretty great to see a lizard in such detail, something I could never appreciate with the naked eye!  Many thanks to Vince for coming down to work with the lizards!    Also, Vince's son Hunter is an expert lizard nooser in training!  He had plenty of natural talent!

Lizard Project- Day 10. Lizard Lingo!

We are on the cutting edge of evolutionary biology, but also on the cutting edge of developing new vocabulary.  After spending days and days trying to catch lizards, we have developed some new vocab words.  Let me define a few of these words, and use them in a sentence so you can better understand them. 

“Squirrel” verb To run around to the backside of a tree to avoid danger coming from the front, as squirrels commonly do to avoid predators.

In common lizard speak:  “Hey Dan, did you get that big male?”  “Nah, he squirreled me, can you see him from the other side?”

“The Praying Mantis”  noun The lizard catching technique generally employed to counter squirreling.  When a lizard is unseen, but its location is well known, the lizard-catcher aligns his hands in a prayer position, and then rapidly wraps his fingers around the tree, hoping to capture the lizard on the other side.

In common lizard speak:  “Hey Tim, that lizard is directly on the other side of that branch, use the Praying Mantis!” (Video demonstration to come!)

“The Put-back” noun When one lizard catcher should capture a lizard, but fails at the last moment, but another lizard catcher comes in to capture that same lizard before it escapes.  This word was borrowed from basketball, when a player simultaneously rebounds and scores off a teammates missed shot.  To see a prime example of a putback, see the video:

In common lizard speak:  “I can’t believe that dang lizard got away from me when I was getting it out of the noose!”  “Yeah, Good thing Reedy was there with the Put-Back, Taj Gibson would be sooooo jealous!”

Day 8 & 9: A field day in the life of an evolutionary biologist- repost from Aaron's blog

As a biology teacher it seems to me that many kids who would make really great biologists (Maybe you are one of those kids!), don’t become biologist because they don’t  know any biologists personally and can’t picture exactly what it is they would do as a biologist.  Here at WideWorldScience we love what we do and we want to share it with you.  While it is true that there is a lot of time spent back at the lab, analyzing data, teaching classes, planning experiments and preparing for field expeditions, all of us love to get out and do science in the wild.  We really do love working with our friends outside, paddling kayaks, looking for wildlife, climbing trees and chasing lizards. We live for these field trips!  Here is a typical field day in the life of a biologist:

Dan and Andrew with our rental truck and kayak trailer.

6:30 Wake up- Four of us are packed into the tiny bunkhouse room at the Guano Tolomato Matanzas Estuarine Research Reserve.  It is small, but it has air conditioning, running water, electricity and an internet connection, so we are glad to have it.  Many times we camp in tents while we are working in the field.

6:45 Breakfast- cereal, milk and bananas


8:00 Drive 3 miles to the boat launch- This is where we put the kayaks in the water.  There are lots of fisherman that put their boats in the estuary here.  It is a busy place.7:15 Packing the gear- We pack up all of our gear into the truck for the day.  This includes, lizard nooses, lizard bags, drinking water, dry shoes, sunscreen, cameras, animal coolers, lizard noose repair kit, duct tape (you always need duct tape), life jackets, kayaks, paddles and of course lunch (usually pb&j sandwiches, apples and granola bars).



8:30 Paddle out to the islands- This is one of my favorite parts of the day.  It takes about 10 minutes to paddle to Island M, our closest island, and about 45 minutes to paddle to Island F, the furthest island.  We often have dolphins swim near us while we paddle.

9:00 We land on an island.  This requires us to wade through the shallow water.  Since Tim cut his foot on an oyster shell two days ago, we have to help him keep his feet dry. See this video.

The commute to the office.

9:15- 12:15 We hunt for lizards on the island.  We just walk around carefully looking for lizards in the trees.  When we find one we then try to noose it.  We put numbers on those that we have already caught so we don’t catch them again accidentally.

12:15- 12:45 We take a break to eat our lunch.

1:00- 4:00 We move to a second island and catch lizards there.

Looking for lizards in all the wrong places.

4:15 We paddle the kayaks back to the boat launch and load them back up on the trailer to drive back to the field station.

5:00 Cold Showers-  Sometimes we even stop for ice cream on the way home.


5:00 to 6:30 Blogging, Tweeting, Cooking Dinner and updates data notebooks

















6:30-10:00 Processing Lizards.  This is what we call it when we measure, weigh, mark and take tissue samples from the lizards.

10:30 Sleep time!  We are really tired by this point in the day!

Lizard Project- Day 7

 Each day that we have been working on The Lizard Project has been different, but what all of the days have in common is that we are making progress towards our goal of gathering enough data to make conclusions on whether or not or hypotheses are supported.  All of our data collection brings us closer to being able to say something, supported by evidence, about how sex ratios effect the evolution of animal populations.

Since we caught so many lizards yesterday (135! Wow!) we had a huge backlog of lizard measuring, weighing and marking to do. To get everything done we split up the team.  Dan stayed back at the field station to do the measuring, while Andrew, Tim and I paddled out to Islands M and K. We worked for 6 hours total, but only caught 47 lizards today.  Many of the lizards we spotted today were already marked.  That is a good sign because it means we are already getting close to having all of the animals captured, marked and measured on a couple of our islands. We also had a great Skype conversation  with Erin Nash's Zoology class. The Benton High School students had great questions for us and the whole thing was a lot of fun.

Oyster beds are sharp - ouch!

While we are down hear working the pace can be grueling at times.  The work on the islands is often very hot and we often work late into the night measuring  lizards.  Crawling around in the trees and bushes chasing after lizards leaves us scratched up and bruised.  Yesterday Tim got even more scratched up while getting back into his kayak.  He accidentally stepped on a razor sharp oyster shell and cut his foot.




Throughout all of the work that we do with the lizards, one of the greatest perks of our job is working in such a beautiful setting with so many cool animals all around us.  The insect communities on the islands are amazing and would be worthy of an entire research project on their own.  

Lizard Project Day 6- Lots of Lizards!

 The cool, rainy day we had yesterday made it slow for both lizards and lizard-catchers alike.  When we awoke this morning to clear skies, we knew that the lizards would be eager to be out.  We visited two islands today, and hunted the lizards like mad.  And we did very well.  We caught 135 lizards today, including this one that was eating a grasshopper!  That is A LOT of lizards.  As our goal is to catch as many of the lizards present on each island as we can, we feel very good about days like this.  What we don't look forward to, is processing 135 lizards tonight.  We "process" lizards, be measuring, weighing, photographing, and marking each lizard back in our field station (aka bunkhouse).  It takes about 3 minutes to process each lizard, so you can do the math (and in case you can't do math, that adds up to about 7 hours of solid processing).

We also noticed this pair of Green Anoles mating as we were searching for our study species, the Brown Anole.  So why did these two end up together?  That is part of the question us biologists are interested in.  The were both able to survive this long, so that is a prerequisite to successful mating.  Did this male have fight off other males to keep a high quality territory? Did he attract this female with a flashy dewlap display?  Was it just a chance encounter, and she would have been willing to mate with any male she crossed paths with?  These are all questions we don't know the answers too, but our work with the brown anoles will give us some insights into at least that species. Notice that he is biting the back of her neck during their mating! Interesting.

On a side note, I had the most terrifying moment of my life yesterday. After the rains, I went for a run and then swim in the ocean.  As I was swimming, I noticed two HUGE shark fins cruising towards me.  I turned and swam/ran/stumbled my way back onto the beach.  They came within 10 meters of me. Their dorsal fins were about 18-24 inches tall, and was about 6 feet in front of their tails, which was also breaking the surface.  This means these sharks were probably about 12 feet long.  I never saw the heads, just the fins and tail, so I don't know what species they were,  but based of their size, I  certainly could have been on the menu. Turns out Florida has had the most shark attacks of any state in history, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History...  I won't be swimming anytime soon.

Days 4 and 5 of the Lizard Project- repost from Aaron's blog

We are already into day 5 of The Lizard Project.  Our team is settling in to our daily routine of working in the field, When it comes to science in the field, nothing is ever really routine.

Yesterday, was a really full day.  We left at 6:00 am to get our rental pickup truck.  This is great for us, because we can now pull a trailer with all four of our kayaks and carry all of our gear in the back, all in one trip.

Tim caught a bumble bee with a lizard noose.  No way!

We did four Skype video calls with classrooms. The first call was to Adam Taylor's class in Nashville, TN at Overton High School.  They asked lots of great questions and Mr. Taylor even ran a live webcast of our conversation!  We then talked to 3 of Mr. Will Reed's classes at Kelly High School in Chicago.  The first conversation actually took place from the water while we were paddling the kayaks out to the islands!  We had  hot sunny weather and it was a great day for the lizards. We caught 76.  Tim also became a legend among our crew when he caught a bumble-bee out of mid air with his lizard noose.  If you don't understand why that is amazing, check out this quick video of a lizard noose in action. http://bit.ly/HszCIG Now picture using that to catch a bumble bee in mid-air.

Threatening Sky

Today mother nature dealt us a completely different day to work with.  We got out to the islands around 9:00am, but it was cool and windy with storm clouds threatening.  We worked at catching lizards for 4 hours total on three different islands and only caught 6 lizards. Lizards are ectothermic or what you might know as cold-blooded. Because they are ecothermic, they can't move very fast when they are cool.  So on days when it is not sunny and hot, they spend most of their time hiding inside of trees or underneath palm fronds.  They are almost impossible to find under these conditions and we only found a few. We decided that any more time spent searching for hidden lizards was not worth it,  the sky grew more threatening and we spotted lightning. That was our cue to head for home.  We hurried to load up our gear in the boats and paddle for the dock.  We  paddled with a huge wind at our backs and loaded the kayaks onto the trailer just as the rain and hail hit.  No we are back at the field station catching up on data processing and waiting out the rain.



Aaron Reedy

Lizard Project Day 4 and 5

Day 4 was a busy day.  We, picked up a truck which makes transporting kayaks easier, caught 76 lizards on 2 islands, released lizards from the previous day on 2 islands, and skyped with 4 different classrooms.  We also processed (weighed, measured, photographed, and marked) a ton of lizards.  On day 4 it was very sunny, which made for active lizards.  This both helps us (as lizards are out and about) and hinders us (as the lizards are really hard to catch).  The lizards become hard to catch because they are ectothermic, and in warm temperatures they are operating close to their optimal body temperature, which makes them very athletic.  Still, we managed to get a lot of them.  

Today is Day 5 (Saturday).  Today it was very cool and overcast, and we found very few lizards in the morning (only 6 captured in total).  In the early afternoon, it started to storm, so we got of the islands as quickly as possible and made it back to shore just before a huge rain, lightning, and hail storm.  So now we are catching up on other work.

Lizard Project- Day 3 videos

We had a busy Day 3!  Here are videos of the Island Glass lizard we found, how we capture lizards, and  how we measure dewlaps!

Lizard Project- Day 3. The little things.

One of the best parts about doing research in the field is the little unexpected things that you get to see because you are spending time looking at nature so carefully. Today we got a lot of work done.  We measured dewlaps in the morning for 20 lizards, paddled out to islands M and K where we caught 76 more lizards, took a break for dinner and then measured, weighed and marked our catch.  We did a lot of work, but the things I will remember about today were the little things that happened in between the work.

While paddling between islands in our kayaks, we saw a snake swimming out in the middle of the estuary.  We paddled over to try and catch it.  Once Tim had it in hand, we realized that it wasn't a snake at all.  It was a eastern glass lizard, a species of lizard without legs.  It is a great example of convergent evolution.  They look like snakes, but they evolved this body completely independently.  None of us had ever seen one in real life (aka: the wild) before.

In the middle of working on the islands, we heard loud snorting and slapping noises.  In the estuary, we saw several dolphins swimming in the shallows.  Quite a site to see for us, since we all live in the midwest, nowhere near an ocean.

The other fun part of the day occurred as we chased down a large male anole.  Aaron spotted the anole in the tree, and it was eating the lunch of a fat spider.  Tim then tried to catch the anole with his lizard noose but accidentally caught the spider instead. The seconds later, Dan caught the lizard.

We are looking forward to more of the little things.  -Tim and Aaron

Lizard Project- Day 2

 Yesterday Dan and I arrived in Florida.  Today was our first field day.  We kayaked to 6 islands today, and tagged every tree on every island, for a total of 410 trees tagged! We tag each tree so we can note exactly where we catch or encounter each lizard we see. For example the tag at right is on Tree 45 at island "N".   Of the six islands, we saw lizards on every one.  Some islands were crawling with lizards, others were much more sparse. We finished tagging the trees at about 2pm, and decided to revisit a few of the islands to try and get some lizards.  We saw very few lizards the first time around on the two islands we revisited, so we were very happy when we ended up catching 20 lizards by the end of the day!

LIzard Project- We have arrived in Florida

Here is a little info about our first day in Florida. Stay tuned, as we head out to our Islands on Day 2 for the first time since last August.  We can't wait to see what is out there.

Millie, the snake in Mr. Morris's Class is  also a Corn Snake.  This one is a lot younger, and cruising around in the wild, though!

Dan "The Lizard King" Warner

I have learned a tremendous amount from Dan Warner, who is currently a post-doc in Fred's lab.  As you know, I am very interested in sex-ratio evolution (see "Why I study Turtles?" post).  And so is Dan.  Dan has developed a very big and intriguing project on sex ratio evolution using on islands in Florida.  I am going on my second trip to Florida next week with Dan to continue work on the project.

Here is a little bit about Dan.  You will be hearing much more from us in the near future!

Tweet tweet!

In order to correspond with students and anyone else interested when I am in the field, I have just opened a twitter account. @timsturtles is my username.  Start following, as our Lizard Project adventure starts next week!