Summary: North American map turtle habitats get green-yellow skin, pale uppers, semi-flat and ridged green-brown uppers, webbed hindfeet and yellow-garnished eyes.
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| Northern map turtle hatchlings emerge from eggs with white protuberance, known as egg tooth, for breaking through eggshell; yellow lines on skin, which are reminiscent of topographical maps, account for Graptemys geographica's common name: Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre @OntarioTurtleCC, via Twitter March 25, 2013 |
North American map turtle habitats accept distribution ranges from Lakes Champlain, George and Ontario through Lake Superior, through the St. Lawrence River to the Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee Rivers and everywhere in-between.
Isolated populations in the Delaware and Susquehanna River drainage systems belong to the map turtle species whose common name bestows juvenile and mature male patterned shells. They carry the scientific name Graptemys geographica for "written (pattern upon) freshwater turtle (species that contain shell patterns like charted) earth (canals and waterways and) writing." Descriptions in 1817 by Charles Alexandre Lesueur (Jan. 1, 1778-Dec. 12, 1846), only known sketcher of extinct King Island emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae minor), drive scientific designations.
Map turtle life cycles expect brackish and freshwater lakes and rivers with abundant aquatic vegetation, log jams, muddy bottoms, slow currents and sun-warmed exposures for basking.
March through May, May through July and August through November flourish as southern and northern North American map turtle breeding, egg incubation and hatchling emergence months.
Map turtles generally go about secretively and undetected except when they get into great stack-ups of one atop or near another on favorite sun-warmed basking logs. They have emydid habits of harboring toxins in their flesh from harvesting pesticide-harmed invertebrates and heading toward sun-warmed waterside grasses, groundcovers, logs, rocks, soils and stumps. Southern and northern map turtle life cycles incline more toward waters than toward landed itineraries as their elongated, flattened hindfeet involving aquatic-friendly, terrestrial-unfriendly, untortoise-like webbing indicates.
Agroindustrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory coyotes, crows, foxes, gulls, herons, opossums, raccoons, skunks, snakes and weasels jeopardize southern and northern North American map turtle habitats.
Southern and northern map turtles keep their elongated, straightened foreclaws keen for elaborate courtship patterns like those that other, related box, marsh and pond turtles know.
Females lay two clutches of 12 to 14 ellipsoidal, 1.25-inch (3.18-centimeter) long, thin-shelled eggs in flask-shaped nest cavities where the last hatchlings sometimes linger until spring. The season's last hatchlings may not move away from mother-made nests that sometimes maintain the year's last eggs for hatch times the following May and June. Algae, carrion, clams, crayfish, dead fish, emergent, floating and submerged aquatic plants, insect larvae, slugs, snails and worms nourish omnivorous (everything-eating) southern and northern map turtles.
North American map turtle habitats offer season-coldest coastal temperature ranges, northward to southward, from minus 45 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.78 to minus 6.66 degrees Celsius).
Cooler and warmer sandbars and sandy beaches in more open than vegetated wetland habitat niches respectively produce male and female hatchlings since temperature predicts turtle gender.
Four to 6.25 inches (10.16 to 15.88 centimeters) and 7 to 10.75 inches (17.78 to 27.31 centimeters) queue up as female and male upper-shell (carapace) lengths. Adults reveal narrow-, yellow-striped green skin, one yellow rectangle or spot behind the eyes, semi-flattened, semi-keeled (ridged) green to olive-brown upper-shells, webbed hindfeet and yellow lower-shells. Adult female upper-shell patterns seem obscured and juvenile lower- and upper-shells respectively show dainty spines and dark-seamed scutes whereas adult male upper-shells suggest orange-yellow meshed networks.
Green and yellow-striped skin, semi-flat, semi-ridged green-olive-brown upper-shells, yellow lower-shells, yellow rectangle- or spot-tethered eyes and webbed hindfeet turn up in North American map turtle habitats.
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| Five northern map turtles (Graptemys geographica) bask with a midland painted turtle (Chrysemys picta marginata); Petrie Island, eastern Ottawa, southeastern Ontario, east central Canada; Wednesday, May 12, 2010, 13:21: D. Gordon E. Robertson (Dger), CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons |
Acknowledgment
My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.
Image credits:
Image credits:
Northern map turtle hatchlings emerge from eggs with white protuberance, known as egg tooth, for breaking through eggshell; yellow lines on skin, which are reminiscent of topographical maps, account for Graptemys geographica's common name: Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre @OntarioTurtleCC, via Twitter March 25, 2013, @ https://twitter.com/OntarioTurtleCC/status/316264061996244992
Five northern map turtles (Graptemys geographica) bask with a midland painted turtle (Chrysemys picta marginata); Petrie Island, eastern Ottawa, southeastern Ontario, east central Canada; Wednesday, May 12, 2010, 13:21: D. Gordon E. Robertson (Dger), CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Northern_Map_Turtles.jpg
For further information:
For further information:
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Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12636604
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/turtlesofnewengl00babc#page/378/mode/1up
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12636604
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/turtlesofnewengl00babc#page/378/mode/1up
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