Wood Turtle (<em>Glyptemys insculpta</em>) Spatial Ecology, Habitat Selection, and Use of Restored Oak-Pine Barrens in Northwestern Michigan
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Habitat fragmentation and loss, predation, and illegal collection are among the many threats plaguing turtle species worldwide which have caused substantial population declines. In the United States and Canada, approximately 38% of turtle and tortoise species are under significant threat. The wood turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) a freshwater turtle species experiencing declines and in 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will determine if this species should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. We studied the spatial ecology of wood turtles in northwestern Michigan, USA to fill knowledge gaps that exist throughout their geographic range. Between May 2021 and August 2022, we used VHF radiotelemetry to track 21 wood turtles which allowed us to quantify home ranges and movement patterns, assess habitat selection, and evaluate use of restored oak-pine barrens. Across both field seasons, average home range sizes were not statistically different between gravid females (23.92 ± 16.26 ha), non-gravid females (11.24 ± 3.40 ha), males (12.76 ± 5.68 ha), and juveniles (3.69 ± 1.46 ha). Gravid females averaged farther distances from the river (219.03 ± 13.85 m) compared to non-gravid females (64.86 ± 4.65 m), males (58.08 ± 2.77 m), and juveniles (34.82 ± 2.79 m). Differences between this population and others can be attributed to variations in the availability of resources, quality of habitat, and accessibility of nesting grounds which are inconsistent across their range. Turtles selected lowland riparian and aquatic habitats and avoided upland forest and forested slopes which echoes other wood turtle studies. One gravid female nested in the restored oak-pine barrens habitat indicating this management practice may benefit the reproductive success of this population through an expansion of nesting opportunities. The variability we observed across years in home range sizes, movement distances, and habitat selection among sex and reproductive classes within this population, indicates a need for continued monitoring to determine long-term patterns. The use of oak-pine barrens by gravid females both years provides preliminary support that this restoration may benefit this wood turtle population.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".