Home range in tortoises and box turtles

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GeoTerraTestudo

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I have posted on home range before, but after reading some more on the subject, I thought I'd share what I found with you all. I think natural home range is important because it gives us an idea of how much space box turtles and tortoises really need. Below is a list of several species of box turtle and tortoises, with their natural home range size listed for each sex.

Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina)
Male - 1.20 ha
Female - 1.13 ha
Source: Stickel (1989)

Male - 5.6 ha
Female - 6.3 ha
Source: Ernst and Lovich (2009)

Western box turtle (Terrapene ornata)
Male - 5.8 ha
Female - 2.7 ha
Source: Bernstein et al. (2006)

Gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus)
Male - 1.44 ha
Female - 0.14 ha
Source: McRae et al. (1981)

Male - 2.9 ha
Female - 0.7 ha
Source: Wright (1982)

Male - 2.17 ha
Female - 0.12 ha
Source: McLaughlin (1990)

Male - 0.88 ha
Female - 0.31 ha
Source: Diemer (1992)

Male - 5.3 ha
Female - 1.1 ha
Source: Smith et al. (1997)

California desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii)
Male - 46.3 ha
Female - 16.8 ha
Source: Franks et al. (2011)

Greek tortoise (Testudo graeca)
Male - 2.56 ha
Female - 1.15 ha
Source: Anadon et al. (2006)

Hermann tortoise (Testudo hermanni)
Male - 2.4 ha
Female - 1.6 ha
Source: Swingland et al. (1986)

Male - 1.2 ha
Female - 2.4 ha
Source: Hailey (1989)

Male - 0.7 ha
Female - 1.5 ha
Source: Calzolai and Chelazzi (1991)

Male - 3.3 ha
Female - 4.2 ha
Source: Bossuto et al. (2000)

Male - 4.6 ha
Female - 7.4 ha
Source: Mazzotti et al. (2002)

Russian tortoise (Testudo horsfieldi)
Male - 24.0 ha
Female - 57.0 ha
Source: Lagarde et al. (2003)

I think the take-home message for all this is that it seems as though home range size is variable, not only among species, but also within species, probably because the fewer resources these animals have, the more they have to roam when foraging. So, although box turtles and tortoises do require a lot of space, they probably don't need as much space in captivity as they do in the wild because they are provisioned with food and water, and so they don't have to go looking for them as much.
 

Yvonne G

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I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but how does "ha" equate to my normal way of thinking of size - acres, feet, miles????
 

Guggie

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emysemys said:
I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but how does "ha" equate to my normal way of thinking of size - acres, feet, miles????

From Wikipedia, 1 ha (hectare) = 10,000 sq meters or ~2.5 acres
 

Yvonne G

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Thank you...that's easier to visualize.
 

Madkins007

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Or-

A football field is just about an acre, so 2 1/2 football fields per ha. A male Russian would need about 60 football fields for their range.

A typical residential 'block' (based on 12 blocks to the mile) is about 440 feet by 220 feet, or about 96,800 square feet, about 2 acres- a bit under an ha. Our male Russian would need about 30 or so of these blocks to forage in.

Also- Red-footed tortoises in Moscovitz's study were incredibly variable as well, ranging from under 1 to about 20ha- and her study was limited to a single large rainforest island. We would expect to see very different results for other red-footeds living in savanna, thorn forests, etc.
 

jkingler

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Russians and CDT's do have some harsh environs, so I guess it makes sense that they would really have a long way to go to make sure they get all their caloric needs, but still, that's really impressive!

Any idea what the ha for Sulcatas would be?

And do you have a link to your source? I would be interested to read more.
 
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