Turtles of the World: A Guide to Every Family PDF
Preview Turtles of the World: A Guide to Every Family
T U R T L E S O F T H E W O R L D T U R T L E S O F T H E W O R L D A GUIDE TO EVERY FAMILY Jeffrey E. Lovich and Whit Gibbons PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Published by Princeton University Press 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Text copyright © 2021 by Jeffrey E. Lovich and Whit Gibbons Design and layout copyright © 2021 by Quarto Publishing plc Conceived, designed, and produced by The Bright Press an imprint of The Quarto Group The Old Brewery, 6 Blundell Street, London N7 9BH, United Kingdom T (0) 20 7700 6700 www.QuartoKnows.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage-and-retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021937966 ISBN: 978-0-691-22322-3 Ebook ISBN: 978-0-691-22903-4 Publisher James Evans Editorial Director Isheeta Mustafi Art Director James Lawrence Managing Editor Jacqui Sayers Publishing Manager Kathy Turtle Project Editors Joanna Bentley, Caroline Earle Design Kevin Knight Picture Research Jane Smith Illustrations John Woodcock Cover photos: Front cover, clockwise from top left: Alamy Images/BIOSPHOTO DEDICATION (1, 2), SPL/MYN/Paul Marcellini/ To our friend and colleague Nature Picture Library, Alamy Images/ Carl Ernst (1938–2018) Anat Chantrakool, Alamy Images/Matthijs Kuijpers, Alamy Images/BIOSPHOTO who wrote the first comprehensive book on the biology of turtles (6, 7, 8), Alamy Images/MARKA, SPL/ of the world with systematically organized species accounts Clay Bolt/MYN/Nature Picture Library. (Turtles of the World Carl Ernst and Roger Barbour, 1989) Back cover: Shutterstock/fivespots. and to our wives, Printed in Singapore Sharon and Carolyn, for their continued support of our pursuits of turtles for decades. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Introduction 6 CONTENTS The Turtle Families 46 Suborder Cryptodira 48 Suborder Pleurodira 186 230 Appendices 232 Glossary 234 Resources 235 Turtle Classification 236 Index 239 Picture Credits 240 Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION Turtles are arguably the most successful would appear to be a liability from the standpoint vertebrates to have ever lived. These iconic of mobility and other life functions. animals have been symbolized, memorialized, Turtles have a variety of traits humans utilized, and revered by cultures throughout the consider to be of interest. The sex of hatchlings world for thousands of years. They have changed is often determined by incubation temperatures little in appearance over 200+ million years due of eggs in the nest, not genetically by X or Y to the origin and retention of a morphology and sex chromosomes. Some female turtles have lifestyle unique among vertebrates but which has the ability to store viable sperm for several years endured the test of time. Instantly recognizable after one mating, and embryos can have multiple by their trademark bony shell, turtles are the only sires in the same clutch. In northern latitudes, vertebrates, living or extinct, to have their limb turtles basically “hold their breath” for several girdles (hips and shoulders) inside the shell months during hibernation under ice. Some formed by their rib cage. On the one hand, species have the ability to breathe through the turtle shell appears to be an ingenious form their cloaca as if it were a gill. The longevity of protective armor against many predators of some turtles is widely recognized. Turtles and the elements, while on the other the shell are truly amazing animals! 6 Introduction above | The beautiful Diamond-backed Terrapins of North America live only in brackish water habitats and are the only members of their subfamily with spots instead of stripes. Interest in turtles is growing rapidly as A major purpose of this book is to increase measured by popular and scientific publications appreciation for these successful creatures, largely (Lovich and Ennen 2013). Unfortunately, this rise unchanged since the mists of time, and expand in curiosity is paralleled by dramatic declines in awareness of their plight in the modern world. We turtle populations and extinctions of turtle species provide a broad overview of general biology, fossil around the world. Turtles are unquestionably history, and distribution patterns of turtles. We under siege on local, regional, and global scales, also give details of the ecology and behavior of with a growing number of species threatened with each of the 14 living families and 95 genera, extinction. More than half of the world’s turtles highlighting some of the remarkable adaptations require some form of conservation action to of selected species. Despite their antiquity, protect them – the proportion of turtles in trouble biological knowledge of many turtle species eclipses virtually all other major vertebrate groups remains incomplete, but we have gleaned material except primates. They survived the extinction of for this book from a large and growing scientific dinosaurs, “drifting” continents, and numerous ice literature base. We provide a list of suggested ages punctuated by rising sea levels. Whether they references for anyone interested in pursuing will survive humans remains to be seen. further details of particular species. 7 WHAT IS A TURTLE? TURTLES VS. TERRAPINS VS. TORTOISES Simply put, all tortoises and terrapins are turtles, People call turtles by various names including but not all turtles are tortoises or terrapins. tortoises and terrapins. Technically, all animals Common names of turtles vary regionally and with a bony shell and a backbone are turtles, even we have adhered mostly to those recommended in tortoises and terrapins. Just like foxes are dogs and “Turtles of the World Annotated Checklist and lions are cats, tortoises and terrapins are turtles. Atlas of Taxonomy, Synonymy, Distribution, Tortoises are decidedly terrestrial turtles with and Conservation Status (8th edition; 2017).” club-like hind feet. The word terrapin is derived Scientific names of turtles are generally reliable from a Native American word meaning turtle. for distinguishing between species but are in a state of flux because of phylogenetic below | Species diversity of non-marine reinterpretations and descriptions of new species. turtles found on six continents and their associated island systems, based on the Turtle We use the classification system for families, Taxonomy Working Group, 2017. The exact genera, and species accepted internationally by numbers change every year as new species are described but general continental relationships the majority of turtle biologists at the time of remain comparable, with the highest diversities being in North America and Asia. writing, as specified in the checklist mentioned CONTINENTAL SPECIES DIVERSITY OF TURTLES ❸ ❺ ❶ ❹ 1 ❷ North America ❻ 99 species 2 South America 58 species 3 4 5 6 Europe Africa Asia Australasia 8 species 59 species 95 species 39 species 88 What is a turtle?
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