Research

Students and researchers from Acadia University and other institutions across the province have been studying this unique turtle population since 1987. Below is a brief overview of recent and ongoing projects. Please click on the underlined researcher’s name to learn more about a specific project.

Captive rearing

• 1993-1994: A pilot project was led by Ian Morrison (Park Warden, KNPNHS) to captively rear hatchling turtles for one year before releasing them back into the wild. This technique, known as headstarting, attempts to raise hatchlings to larger size than similarly aged turtles would reach in the wild, in order to increase their likelihood of survival.  In the successful pilot, Ian equipped 8 captively raised hatchlings with radio transmitters before releasing them, in order to identify juvenile habitats, locate wild juveniles, and determine success rate.  
  

• 2002-present: Since 2002 researchers (including Lisa Penny, B.Sc. Hons) have been collecting hatchlings from Grafton Lake, an area where we know the population has declined over the past 40 years, in an attempt to boost the population size.  Recently, researchers have partnered with Oaklawn Farms Zoo  to incorporate incubation of eggs, extend the length of captivity, and improve rearing protocols. This work forms an important part of M.Sc. candidate Mike Lawton’s thesis research

Patterns of growth

• 2004-present:  researcher Monik Richard (M.Sc. candidate) has been examining juvenile growth using digital images of the turtle’s plastron (lower shell). Like trees, juvenile turtles lay down one growth ring per year until they reach adulthood and stop growing (approximately 20-25 years). Monik is comparing these rings to climate data to try to determine how weather affects turtle growth and how Blanding’s turtles may be affected by future climate change. She is also examining tree rings collected from the same areas to see if there is a correlation between turtle growth and tree growth.

Habitat modeling

• 2004-present: researcher Guillaume Bourque (M.Sc. candidate) has been characterizing wetland habitats within the range of Blanding’s turtles in order to build a model to determine which habitat features best predict where Blanding’s turtles will occur. He is also examining how much live-trapping effort is necessary in an area to be reasonably sure that we will detect turtles if they are present.
  
  

Overwintering ecology

• 2004-present: Erica Newton (B.Sc. Honours candidate) has been characterizing the sites where turtles spend the winter. Turtles tend to return to the same site each year and often aggregate in large numbers (up to 15 turtles) in a very small area. Researchers would like to know what features draw them to these sites.
  
  

Community stewardship

• 2002-present: Brennan Caverhill (M.Sc. candidate) has been documenting the distribution, movements, behavior and habitat use of the Pleasant River Blanding’s turtle population. He has worked closely with Pleasant River community members to develop an active stewardship program to insure that people and turtles continue to happily co-exist in the long term.
  

Paternity

• 2002 – present: Janine Beckett (M.Sc. candidate) is employing genetic techniques to help understand the patterns of paternity and male mating success in the small Nova Scotia populations of Blanding’s turtle.
  
  

Population structure

• 1996-present: Steve Mockford (Ph.D. candidate) has been examining the genetic structure of the NS populations of Blanding’s turtles. Analysis of fine scale structure of the Pleasant River population has also been undertaken by former honours students Lori McEachern and Dave Toews 
• 1995 to present: researchers are conducting surveys of genetic variation in Blanding’s turtle populations throughout the North American range; evidence suggests that Nova Scotia turtles contain a significant amount of the species' total genetic biodiversity;

Population Viability Analysis

• 2004- present: researchers conducted a Population Viability Analysis (PVA) on the Kejimkujik population of Blanding’s turtles. The PVA incorporates known data on survivorship and population numbers at each life stage and models future population trends. This analysis suggests that the Kejimkujik population is declining; further analysis and recovery actions are planned.
   
  
  

Determining the range

• 1996-present: researchers launched a campaign to seek public assistance to report sightings of Blanding’s turtles. This resulted in the location of two previously unknown populations in the province and fundamentally changed our understanding of the species in Nova Scotia.
  
  

Hatchling movements

• 1996 –2001: Three studies (researchers Lorraine Standing, Jeffie McNeil, Duncan Smith) have examined the movement patterns of hatchling Blanding’s turtles as they emerge from their nests; a fourth (Abbey Camaclang, M.E.S. candidate) is planned for Fall 2006 in an effort to locate hatchling overwintering sites, and to identify critical hatchling habitats.
  
  

Juvenile ecology

• 1994-1995: Nat McMaster and Ian Morrison conducted the first study of juvenile turtles in Nova Scotia, which revealed 22 previously unmarked juvenile turtles within Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site.
  
  
• 2001-present: researchers began a multi-year study of juvenile abundance and survivorship in two populations in Nova Scotia.
  
  

Nesting ecology

• 1993-present: the volunteer based nest monitoring program has been both protecting nests from predation and providing valuable data on clutch size, nest success, female survivorship and nesting frequency.
  
  
• 1994-1996: Former graduate student Lorraine Standing studied nesting and found that despite predator exclusion, significant nest failures occurred due to flooding and low temperatures during incubation.
  
  
• 1996-1997: a two-year nest predation study by Dave Oickle and Maria Shallow yielded ambiguous results due to a temporary but dramatic decline in raccoon populations at the time. Further work on predator-turtle interactions is warranted.

Publications
This table contains PDF files of many of the recent publications on the Nova Scotia Blanding's Turtle (organized according to year of publication).

Theses
The following is a list of past Honours and Masters thesis on the Nova Scotia Blanding's Turtle population.  All theses were completed at Acadia University under the supervision of T.B. Herman, Biology Department, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada.