earticle

영어

Mauremys reevesii called a Reeve's turtle is listed as an endangered species II and natural monument, # 453 in South Korea. During the last decades, several comprehensive studies have been conducted on the ecology of this turtle, but the evaluation of artificial habitats constructed to use in restoration projects was not done. To investigate daily and seasonal basking pattern of the 16 Reeve's turtles in artificial pond habitat, we videomonitored the turtles for 90 days (between 17 May to 1 July and between 23 Sep to 5 Nov). Four basking behaviors (start time of basking, end time of basking, the number of basking for a day, mean basking time of turtle) obtained from the video data were compared with local weather factors (temperature, humidity, rock temperatures, water temperature, rainfall, wind velocity, daylight hours, amount of clouds, the time of sunrise) using a Spearman correlation test. Based on the results, air temperature, humidity, rock temperature, water temperature, amount of clouds and the time of sunrise significantly affected turtle’s basking behaviors. During the study period, Mauremys reevesii basked on the rock between 4:30a.m. and 8:40p.m. and the number of basing turtles reached its peak at 12:40p.m. No basking turtles were found after 25 Oct., possibly indicating the start of their hibernation. Our findings could be useful to determine the requirements of artificial habitat, and to protect this endangered species in the wild.