| The Red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans) is native from theMississippi of America to around Gulf of Mexico, it is listed as one of the100worstinvasive species in the world. Now it has successful invaded Europe, Africa, Australia,Asian and the area except America country of origin. In China, nearly20years,because blind release, escape from the farm and other reasons, T. s. elegans hasgeneral existed in the wild, but there are few researches about the ecologicaladaptation and harmfulness of T. s. elegans in China. From September2010toNovember2012, we studied home range, reproduction and natural enemy of T. s.elegans in Guangdong Gutian Provincial Nature Reserve by radio telemetry tracking,GPS location, marking and recapture method and direct observation. The main resultsshow as follows:Home range: The results of home range of21T. s. elegans (8males,13females)indicate: Mean100%MCP home range is7.81±9.21hm2, mean95%FKE homerange is5.25±8.66hm2, mean home range core is1.26±1.73hm2, mean length is576.24±424.68m.100%MCP home range of males is12.70±12.54hm2,95%FKEhome range of males is10.26±12.71hm2, home range core of males is2.38±2.45hm2,length of males is778.12±431.20m;100%MCP home range of females is4.79±4.89hm2,95%FKE home range of females is2.16±1.88hm2, home range coreof females is0.57±0.41hm2, length of females is452.00±385.01m. The statisticanalysis indicate:(1)100%MCP home range (P=0.025),95%FKE home range(P=0.025) and home range core (P=0.020) of males are significantly larger than theresults of females, there is no significant difference in length (P=0.053).(2) Inbreeding season,95%FKE home range (P=0.017) and home range core (P=0.017) ofmales are significantly larger than the results of females; In non-breeding season,95%FKE home range (P=0.610) and home range core (P=0.610) are no significantdifferences between the sexes;100%MCP home range and length of males is notsignificantly different with females’ in both breeding season and non-breeding season; (3)100%MCP home range (P=0.021),95%FKE home range (P=0.021) and homerange core (P=0.021) of males in breeding season are significantly larger than innon-breeding season, length (P=0.083) is not significantly different between differentseasons; There is no significant difference between the breeding season andnon-breeding season for females. All of the home range results between100%MCPand95%FKE are not significantly different.Reproduction: From June2011to September2012, the time of spawn is6:00-8:40,there are no spawning activities at afternoon and night; Females spawned at sunny, theair temperature is23.4℃-26.9℃, the water temperature is26.8℃-28.8℃, theillumination intensity is2780lux-64200lux, the individual back to the waterimmediately after spawned, the clutch size of T. s. elegans is7-21eggs in the reserve.We found4natural nest of T. s. elegans from June2011to September2012, weestablished5m×5m big quadrat and1m×1m small quadrat at the nature nests as usagequadrats, and we found4vestiges that digged but not oviposit of T. s. elegans fromJune2012to September2012, established5m×5m big quadrat and1m×1m smallquadrat at4vestiges as compared quadrat, the result of the principal componentanalysis show slope aspect, vegetation type, soil pH, soil humidity, distance fromhuman disturbance, soil texture, coverage, slope position, distance from arbor areimportant for nest selection of T. s. elegans. And the result of Mann-Whitney-U testshow there are selection for soil hardness, coverage and plant density.The results of we established7factitious nests (there are12eggs in each nest)indicate: only3nests hatched juveniles, hatchability is9.52%. There is no significantdifference between hatched juveniles nests and non-hatched juveniles nests. There isno natural enemy for adult turtles have been found, but we found7ants can prey onthe eggs and hatchlings.Although4natural nests that are found were not hatching, we captured2youngturtles hatching in the reserve in2011and2012respectively, so T. s. elegans cansuccessful reproduce in the reserve. |
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