Interactions among individuals define the social organization of a group, and the resulting social structure influences population-level processes such as mating patterns, social learning, and disease transmission.  Social networks within populations may be influenced by geography and other environmental characteristics as well as individual attributes such as age, size, physiological condition, and kinship patterns.  These factors interact to influence individual fitness patterns and, ultimately, population genetics.  This study is utilizing a suite of remote-sensing technologies, including proximity detectores, temperature/depth loggers, radio transmitters, and remote activity monitors, to infer social patterns for the alligator snapping turlte (Macrochelys temminckii), an ecologically important species that is of significant conservation concern.  We will combine these data with hormone profiles and population genomics to draw conclusions about how social and environmental factors affect individual fitness patterns. 

 

Coupling our activity and hormone results with genetic analyses will allow us to infer mating interactions.  Combining our remote sensing and genomic data will enable us to elucidate patterns of male and female reproductive success (which utlimately determines fitness) with respect to space use, activity patterns, inter- and intra-sexual social interactions, male size, and female size and fecundity.  Data of this nature rarely exists, especially for secretive and long-lived species, and as a result, important concepts in evolutionary biology remain poorly tested.  Our research is explicitly designed to test hypotheses related to turtle mating strategies.  It has been postulated that the alligator snapping turtle and other bottom-dwelling turtel species likely exhibit similar mating strategies; thus our results will be applicable to a broad, ecologially defined species group.

 

This is a collaborative project in which my lab is responsible for the population genomics aspect.  We are collaborating with Dr. Day Ligon, Missouri State University, who will be responsible for all aspects of the social interactions and Dr. Matt Lovern, Oklahoma State University, who will oversee the hormonal assays.  Denise Thompson, a Ph.D. student in my program will be involved in all aspects of this project.