Does human alteration of the environment affect female turtle nest-site choice or rates of nest predation? Molly, REU star Jorge, and Matthew - along with fellow AU turtle collaborator Dr. Dan Warner - posed this question in their paper that was just published Folkerts Caldwell, López-Pérez, Warner, & Wolak. 2023. Diversity!
Braving the Alabama heat, humidity, and chiggers, Molly and Jorge were able to collect data on female Emydid turtle nest-site choices as well as rates of predation at nesting areas across a gradient of human disturbance. The neat thing was that we were able to use an EPA database to quantify human disturbance for our analyses. We were also able to see evidence of choice based on a difference in microhabitat variable variance between actual nest sites of female turtles versus randomly selected locations. Read the paper to hear the full story!