It’s herpetology conference season. This past week the PaCE Lab was well represented at the 2025 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, held in St Paul Minnesota July 9-13.
Graduate students Rose Arnold, Chitra Basyal, and Joey Cannizzaro captivated audiences with their papers and oral presentations.
Rose Arnold presented a poster “Gauging Population Health in Urbanized Landscapes: A Body Condition Comparison of Illinois’ Remaining Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata) Populations.” Abstract: Urbanization has altered the hydrology and vegetation structure of many remaining wetlands in the United States. Hydrological and vegetation shifts can alter food availability and disrupt food chains, thus impairing energy flow among trophic levels. For wetland species to persist in altered habitats, managers should promptly develop strategies prioritizing the most vulnerable populations. In some cases, land managers must evaluate population health using short-term data, which can be difficult with long-lived turtle species due to extreme longevity and delayed sexual maturity. Body condition indices (BCI) are commonly used as proxy measurements of body fat, which are assumed to reflect foraging success and fitness of individuals. Body condition can change rapidly in response to resource availability, disease, and stress, making it a viable surrogate for assessing short-term population health. A population with significantly lower body conditions may indicate chronic stressors or fewer site resources. The two extant Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata) populations in Illinois inhabit sites within a heavily urbanized landscape and previous studies revealed differences in demography and microhabitat composition. Here, we compare body conditions between the two remaining populations of Spotted Turtles in Illinois as an additional measure of population health.
Chitra Basyal presented a talk “Structure of freshwater turtle assemblages in a highly developed ecosystem.” Abstract: Freshwater turtles play essential ecological roles in wetlands as omnivores, scavengers, food sources, and nutrient recyclers. Studying freshwater turtle assemblages is crucial because they are sentinel species when monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem health. Northern Illinois has undergone significant habitat modifications due to urbanization, agricultural expansion, and wetland loss, negatively impacting turtle populations. However, most studies in northern Illinois have primarily examined specific species rather than entire turtle assemblages. Our study aims to address the existing gap by investigating freshwater turtle assemblages across five urbanized sites in Illinois. Monitoring the sites used capture-mark-recapture surveys over an extended period; thus, we can assess species diversity, evenness, relative abundance, and richness across sites and years. Our research will determine if there are spatial and temporal variations in assemblage structure, highlight vulnerable species, and provide valuable insights into wetland health in northern Illinois.
Joseph Cannizzaro presented a poster “Effects of Vegetation Management on Predation Rates in the Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus). Abstract: Managing habitat to maximize survivorship and population growth is integral to recovering endangered species. Nearly all native tallgrass prairie habitats in the midwestern United States have been anthropogenically converted to agriculture. The decline in remaining habitat due to encroaching woody vegetation and invasive plants impacts many prairie obligate species, including the Eastern Massasauga (Sistrurus catenatus). Eastern Massasaugas requires open habitats and early successional vegetative assemblages to thermoregulate, forage, and reproduce. To reverse declines, many wildlife managers employ vegetative control practices, such as mechanical mowing and prescribed burns, to maintain early seral stages. However, conflicting evidence suggests reducing vegetative cover could lead to artificially higher or lower predation rates. We investigated the effect of early successional vegetation management on the predation rates of Eastern Massasaugas by conducting a clay model predation study. We placed models into two treatments, habitat recently managed for vegetative succession or adjacent unmanaged habitat, and scored them for predation marks. Additionally, clay models were made in two different body postures, outstretched and coiled, to investigate how body posture potentially influences snake predation rates. Our study presents the impact of recent vegetation management on predation rates and provides insights to inform future conservation efforts.