Deepak, V and Noon, Barry R and Vasudevan, Karthikeyan (2016) Fine Scale Habitat Selection in Travancore Tortoises (Indotestudo travancorica) in the Anamalai Hills, Western Ghats. In: JOURNAL OF HERPETOLOGY, 50 (2). pp. 278-283.
PDF
Jou_Her_50-2_278_2016.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Registered users only Download (588kB) | Request a copy |
Abstract
Travancore Tortoises (Indotestudo travancorica) are endemic to the Western Ghats, south India. Landscape level surveys showed no clear habitat selection by the species. Therefore, we used radiotelemetry to study home-range size and fine-scale spatial movement habitat use of four tortoises from 2008-10. Minimum convex polygon home-range sizes of four tortoises varied between 5.2 and 34 ha. Tortoises spent a majority of their time in evergreen forest edge that had bamboo-lantana-grass. Eighty-two percent of the locations in the evergreen forest, and 95% of the locations in the bamboo-lantana-grass habitat, were at the edge of these habitats. Therefore at a fine scale, tortoises used the forest edge, possibly because it provided opportunities for foraging and thermoregulation.
Item Type: | Journal Article |
---|---|
Publication: | JOURNAL OF HERPETOLOGY |
Publisher: | SOC STUDY AMPHIBIANS REPTILES |
Additional Information: | Copy right for this article belongs to the SOC STUDY AMPHIBIANS REPTILES, C/O ROBERT D ALDRIDGE, ST LOUIS UNIV, DEPT BIOLOGY, 3507 LACLEDE, ST LOUIS, MO 63103 USA |
Department/Centre: | Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences |
Date Deposited: | 25 Aug 2016 10:09 |
Last Modified: | 25 Aug 2016 10:09 |
URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/54333 |
Actions (login required)
View Item |