Together with Emily Stinson, REU student from Hamilton College, we set out to examine the activity and behavior of desert box turtles using Thermochron iButtons (miniature temperature data-loggers) glued harmlessly to their shells.
Box turtles are ectothermic or 'cold-blooded', which means that they are dependent upon their environment to regulate body temperature. For this reason, a data-logger recording temperature at pre-programmed intervals will capture the timing and duration of turtle movements. In other words, the turtle iButton will read a higher temperature once the animal emerges from a cool burrow to bask in the sun, and will record the time spent basking, before the turtle again retreats to its burrow.
Emily and I attached iButtons to 21 wild box turtles then released them. When we recapture the animal, we download the data and reset the iButton to begin recording anew. Our data from the handful of animals recaptured to date is exciting.
We can clearly see when the animals emerge from their burrows in the morning, how much time they spend active, and approximately when they retreat to shelter once the day becomes too hot (a graphical example of this data is attached below).
We are eager to continue recapturing animals and analyzing the data to better understand the ecology of an otherwise obscure inhabitant of the Sevilleta LTER.