Meeting Abstract
Communication, a product of sensory perception, is key to individual relationships, especially when organisms are spatially far apart in an increasingly fragmented environment. The Gopher tortoise Gopherus polyphemus, a recent species of special concern, is a long-leaf pine specialist often spread far apart from conspecifics. Distance between mating individuals could reduce the number of mating opportunities, a serious concern in a declining species. Currently, little is known about tortoise sensory perception and how individual tortoises locate each other for mating. In this study, a total of 33 paired trials (11females and 22males) in the months of April and June were conducted to address sensory perception in tortoise interactions. In Experiment 1, males and females were unable to see each other to allow for chemical detection without vision of conspecifics, whereas in Experiment 2, males and females were allowed to interact (experienced visual and olfactory cues). Behavior was observed during each ten-minute trial, categorized, and timed. Behavior categories included: regulatory, stress-related, and awareness of conspecifics. Males and females did not differ in total numbers of behaviors regardless of category observed in either experiment type (p=0.40 for non-visual trials; p=0.80 for interaction trials), indicating captive conditions did not affect the sexes differently.When analyzing behavior categories, males were more likely to spend time performing awareness behaviors in the non-visual trials than interaction trials (221.7+72.68 vs. 66.0 +6.5; p=0.0001), and both males and females exhibited more sniffing behavior in the non-visual trials versus the interaction trials (168.06+33.33 vs. 71+21.96; p=0.007). A possible explanation for higher sniffing behavior in non-visual trials could be that tortoises are using olfaction to compensate for lack of visual cues.
