Anthony Pierlioni Fig.
Anthony Pierlioni Fig. 8. C. guttata and Emys orbicularis basking together in the outdoor pond. (Reptomin), frozen foods like mussel meat, shrimp, smelt, Gammarus, mosquito larvae, Artemia, daphnia, but also pink mice. Live prey is offered on a regular basis in the shape of crickets, locusts, woodlice, snails, earthworms and Zophobas larvae. They will also feed on all sorts of berries, including raspberries, currants, strawberries and others more. Author Michael Richter Schwarzenberg, Germany mrrichter@web.de Minutes of the discussion on Clemmys guttata held at the workshop about North American Turtles 2016 Spotted Turtles are poor swimmers and need quite low water levels and/or enough structures like logs, stones, plants and climbable shores in their pond to reach the water surface. The species can be stressed easily even when it can see their congeners through the glass of their terraria. Many keepers in Germany take care of their C. guttata separate in indoor enclosures. Only a few keep female groups together. There are different experiences regarding group keeping in outdoor ponds. One keeper has good records with a group of one male and three females in a heavily planted pond. Reared indoors they should be separated from shell lengths of 6 cm. Most of the stock kept in Germany is of unknown locality. There are surprisingly many captive breeds and it might come to many cases of mixing different locales. Although in wild caught founders and captive breeds a preference for different temperatures is obvious. Some keepers report outdoor hibernation of their turtles without problems, whilst others can do only a mild and short hibernation to avoid fatalities (the latter: Florida locale!?). Similar observations were made during incubation. One breeder reports dying eggs at 29 °C (84 °F) constant temperatures, another is producing mainly female offspring at 29-31 °C (84-88 °F), some with irregular scutes. Males are produced at constant 26 °C (78 °F). Fluctuating incubation temperatures will result in bigger and healthier hatchlings what is true for many turtle and tortoise species. 26 RADIATA 26 (2), 2017
Spotted Turtles Robert A. T. Hentschel Keeping and Breeding Bog Turtles, Glyptemys muhlenbergii With their conspicuous yellow spots on their heads, I often refer to the Bog Turtles in my care as my “very special yellow-ears”. They will not grow nearly as large as the equally North American Yellow-eared Slider, Trachemys scripta scripta, which may by all means reach some 25 cm in carapace length. Bog Turtles are the smallest turtles of all and will grow to a maximum of only 11.4 cm (Ernst & Lovich 2009). The adult specimens in my care do not even come near this size and are fully grown and reproductively active at a mere 7–9 cm in carapace length. Historical aspects The Bog Turtle was first scientifically described by Schoepff in 1801 based on a specimen collected by Pastor Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Muhlenberg and forwarded to Schoepff for scientific studies. Schoepff then unfortunately failed to designate a holotype and limited the information on the type locality to the US state of “Pennsylvania”. Stejneger & Barbour therefore restricted the type locality to Lancester, Pennsylvania, in 1917. This year also saw Dunn defining the taxon Clemmys nuchalis from North Carolina. However, his C. nuchalis was in fact nothing else but the G. muhlenbergii that had been described a 115 years prior so that the name “nuchalis” was sunk in the synonymy of “muhlenbergii”, which, being the older name, had priority according to the rules of taxonomy of the International Code for Zoological Nomenclature (Ernst & Bury 1977). This brief foray into the history of the Bog Turtle indicates quite clearly that not many people came face to face with specimens of this Fig. 1. G. muhlenbergii, old female. RADIATA 26 (2), 2017 27
