Lake County has finished our first week in the field… and I think we can call it a success!<\/p>\n
We caught and sampled 16 Blanding’s turtles, 2 painted turtles, and a snapping turtle this week, along with a new species for me, a garter snake!<\/p>\n
Even though we set 38 total traps this week, the majority of our catches actually came from radio telemetry.<\/p>\n
Radiotelemetry is a fantastic way in which researchers keep track of individuals throughout and across years. It is a method used in the management of many different wildlife species, and we have applied the technology to tracking turtles in Lake County for 20 years! For many of these years, the very same turtles have been followed, creating an incredibly detailed and extensive database of turtle knowledge for us to reference to help save this endangered species. We have insights into their nesting activity, range, growth rates, and overall behavior that we would never be able to accurately extrapolate from non-sequential data. While 20 years may seem like a lot, it is still quite short in comparison to the lifespan of these turtles, so we will continue this project for years to come. With the addition of WEL students, we also have quantitative health insights about these turtles as well!<\/p>\n
Each turtle has its own device affixed to its shell which emits a unique frequency. We can tune our handheld devices to this frequency and, with the help of antennae, follow the sound of its beeps until we have a turtle at our feet! Sometimes, the turtle is nearby and a quick find, and sometimes… you get your steps in.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, we set out on a mission to track down all 11 adult female Blanding’s turtles at our field site. We split up into two teams to divide and conquer. Despite the turtles spreading themselves out considerably, we were able to find every last one of them pretty efficiently. As a returning member of the Lake Co team, it was a pleasure to see all of their familiar faces as we worked them up.<\/p>\n
It turns out that traversing an entire field site is an effective way to find new turtles, and I was lucky enough to do just that. The vast majority of the Blanding’s that we find in Lake County have previously been recorded due to their extensive trapping efforts in years past, but I spotted one swimming through the marsh, and when I caught it, I realized it had no notches – a new wild adult female! We gave her a full work up, with a her own notch code and pit tag, and of course did our exam and sampling protocol. After that, we sent her on her way to hopefully have some babies later this season! She brought our total turtle count for the day up to 12!<\/p>\n
For Sathvik, this week involved a lot of new skills from the aforementioned radiotelemetry to bloodwork back at the field lab. In order to sample turtles, the first step is getting them in hand either via the aforementioned radiotelemetry or trapping.<\/p>\n
Turtle trapping sounds more like an art than a science, requiring you to tap into your inner turtle. We use both large and medium sized hoop nets here in Lake County. Hoop nets are shaped like a tunnel with funnels on both ends to ensure critters that swim into the trap can’t exit the trap until we check them within 24 hrs. Why do they swim into the trap? Because we bait the traps with sardines to get a “fishy” smell to entice nearby turtles. Traps are checked each day to ensure no animal spends too long in the trap. At the end of the week, we close our traps and re-evaluate whether we should re-trap certain locations or find new spots. In the traps, we often also catch crayfish, minnows, and tadpoles which we identify and report to help the Lake County Forest Preserves monitor the ecology of the region. With our traps this week, we were able to sample 2 Blanding’s turtles, 1 painted turtle, and 1 snapping turtle. Since it was a colder week, there didn’t seem to be too much activity.<\/p>\n
Traipsing around wetlands to set traps and track turtles lets you run into all sorts of other cool species. Many of our tadpoles found were Boreal chorus frogs. We found all sorts of crayfish in our traps, but most commonly White River crayfish. We also ran across all sorts of birds like soras, Virginia rails, sandhill cranes, common yellowthroats, northern yellow warbler, red-tailed hawks, and red-winged blackbirds. Though we didn’t see many mammals, we did see a beaver dam near one of our sites.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, with the help of Dr. Eliza and Callie, Sathvik helped locate and sample 5 of the 11 tagged Blanding’s turtles. Sampling turtles, it turns out, requires a lot of dexterity. Holding all the swabs in one hand while maneuvering a turtle is no easy feat. One of the more technical tasks is drawing blood from a turtle. There are a few locations to draw blood from on a turtle, but our choice is the subcarapacial venous sinus. This sinus is located on midline underneath the carapace (the part of the shell lining the turtle’s back) where the neck meets the shell.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, this sinus is also located by a large lymphatic network. The lymphatic system contains lymph which is derived from plasma (the fluid part of your blood) and acts like a waste transport system, picking up debris, waste, and fluid from cells. The lymphatic system can also play a role in nutrient transportation as well. Though the lymphatic system is incredibly important to the body, it is important that we don’t contaminate our blood samples with lymph because it may alter our lab work and understanding of turtle health. Since the lymph is fluid, it may “dilute” our blood samples and alter important values like our hematocrit which quantifies the percent of your blood that are red blood cells as opposed to fluid\/plasma. For this reason, it is important that we evaluate our blood draws for lymph contamination.<\/p>\n
While relocating and capturing our radiotelemetry turtles, Sathvik had the opportunity to practice drawing blood from the subcarapacial sinus. Though there was definitely a learning curve, by the end of the week, he managed to get the hang of it!<\/p>\n
Catching this many turtles in our first week has definitely set the tone for a productive field season in Lake County. We are so excited to continue and see just how many high quality samples we can collect as the weeks go on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lake County has finished our first week in the field… and I think we can call it a success! We caught and sampled 16 Blanding’s turtles, 2 painted turtles, and a snapping turtle this week, along with a new species for me, a garter snake! Even though we set 38 total traps this week, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1591,"featured_media":6658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1591"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6645"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6664,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645\/revisions\/6664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}