Abstract
Climate change is likely to have strong impacts on oviparous animals with minimal parental care, because nest temperature can impact egg development, sex, and survival, especially in the absence of mitigation via parental care. Nesting females may compensate for increasing temperatures by altering how, when, and where they nest. We examined the factors determining nest depth and site choice as well as the effects that nest depth and location have on nest temperature and hatching success in the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin). We found that nest depth was not correlated with nesting female size, egg characteristics, or daily temperatures. Nest temperatures and hatching success were correlated with different environmental and nest characteristics between 2004, a cool and wet year, and 2005, a hot and dry year. Females selected nests with lower southern overstory vegetation in 2005. These results suggest that nest depth and location can play an important yet varying role in determining nest temperature and hatching success in more extreme warm and dry environmental conditions and, therefore, may mitigate the impacts of climate change on oviparous reptiles. However, we found minimal evidence that turtles choose nest locations and depths that maximize offspring survival based on short-term environmental cues.
Highlights
Global air and ocean temperatures have increased over the past century and current trends are expected to continue and accelerate [1]
Hatching success was lower and most nest temperature measurements were higher in the hot, dry year than in the cool, wet year. These results suggest that diamondback terrapins may not be able to readily compensate for changing temperatures due to climate change by altering nest depth and location
We found little evidence that diamondback terrapins respond to environmental conditions by altering nest characteristics that affect hatching survival, terrapins and other oviparous animals could respond to long-term temperature cues or other environmental conditions when determining nest depth and location
Summary
Global air and ocean temperatures have increased over the past century and current trends are expected to continue and accelerate [1]. Climate change is expected to have widespread impacts on the fitness of aquatic, marine, and terrestrial species throughout the world according to Blaustein et al [2], Pankhurst and Munday [3], and Grazer and Martin [4] Organisms may alter their behavior to mitigate the effects of climate change on survival and reproductive success. Nest temperature has wide-ranging impacts on hatching success, incubation time, and hatchling growth rates [16,17,18,19,20,21] as well as indirect effects on hatchling size and hatchling activity levels in turtles, lizards, and snakes [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23].
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