Meeting Abstract
Rising temperatures resulting from climate change instigate the advancement of reproductive phenology in a variety of organisms across the globe. These phenological shifts have profound impacts on thermal tolerance and breeding ecology and can promote asynchronies between interacting species. However, reptiles are vastly underrepresented in such studies and much work is still needed to understand how these changes will impact phenology in these organisms. Since 1981, we have monitored reproductive activities of three fresh water turtle species, the Yellow Mud Turtle (Kinosternon flavescens), the Western Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta), and the Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina), at our western Nebraska study site. During these years, average annual air temperatures at the site have increased at a rate greater than 0.4⁰C per decade. Nevertheless, the timing of nesting (whether first nest or mean/median nest) in all three species of turtles, has remained relatively unchanged. We find that nest timing in each species was highly correlated with spring day-time temperatures, which have not increased substantively at our study site over the past four decades; instead, the ambient temperature increase is mostly due to increases in mean daily minimum temperatures. Thus, should climate change eventually increase spring day-time temperatures, nesting phenology should respond inversely, which could impact recruitment rates by shifting nesting emergence date and could also have downstream effects on nest predators that rely on the predictability of turtle nesting as a food source.
