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RHINOCLEMMYS PUNCTULARIA (Spotted-legged Turtle). REPRODUCTION.
... Despite its wide distribution and ecological plasticity, the species appears to have low population density throughout its range and much of its biology remains poorly known (Vogt 2008;Ferrara et al. 2017), similarly to other species of Rhinoclemmys (Butterfield et al. 2020;Folt 2020). Most papers on R. p. punctularia in Brazil are notes on distribution (Dornas et al. 2011;Silva et al. 2011;Siciliano et al. 2014: Silva et al. 2016Valle et al. 2016) or natural history (Vogt et al. 2009;Cunha et al. 2019). ...
... Besides, some species reproduce during the dry season and can aggregate in the vicinities of nesting sites (Fachín-Terán and Vogt 2004;Bernardes et al. 2014). Rhinoclemmys p. punctularia has a long, intermittent nesting period (March-April and September-December;Vogt 2008;Cunha et al. 2019), and smaller streams in the headwater areas are subject to less dramatic seasonal variation in water level. Both factors probably contributed to the fact that the distribution and activity rates of this turtle in our study areas (and therefore their capture probability) were similar throughout the year. ...
Rhinoclemmys punctularia punctularia is the only turtle of the family Geoemydidae with part of its range in Brazil. The species is semi-aquatic and widely distributed across the Amazon basin but is still poorly studied. We evaluated aspects of the population structure, habitat use, seasonal activity, and diet of the species during one year, from the beginning of the rainy season to the end of the dry season, in two headwater localities in the Tocantins and Tapajós river basins, in the state of Pará, Brazil. We captured 45 individuals, 14 in the Tocantins basin and 31 in the Tapajós basin. The size-class frequency distributions of captured individuals did not differ between the two samples. The turtles were most frequently captured in first-order streams, followed by lentic (third-order dammed streams) and second-order streams. The capture rate did not vary significantly between sampling periods (start and peak of the rainy season; start and end of the dry season). The trapping effort to capture a single individual was much higher in the Tapajós basin (1,215 trap-hours) than in the Tocantins basin (136 trap-hours). Overall, the low capture rates confirm the secretive nature of the species in Amazonia and its apparent rarity. The individuals analyzed in this study consumed mainly plants.
KEYWORDS:
diet; freshwater turtle; population ecology; seasonality; Amazon basin
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