Red Eared Sliders

When fleeing from a predator, animals forfeit the ability to acquire additional resources and reduce their risk of predation (Frid & Dill, 2002). The avoidance of predation and the need to acquire resources to survive creates a tradeoff that animals must balance in order to survive. Flight initiation distance (FID) can be used to determine how animals perceive the risk of predation in their habitat (Stankowich & Blumstein, 2005). Although FID has been used to identify predatory risk assessments in birds, mammals and lizards, it has not yet been used to evaluate risk assessments in urban dwelling pond turtles. Red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta) flee from a basking site into an aqueous environment when approached by a natural predator and forgo additional time basking in the sun. In

Ponds at the Arboretum have less foot traffic and noise than the pond at Heritage Park. At both locations, basking turtles will be approach by a single or group of observe at a set walking speed of 1 m/s (Bateman, Fleming, Jones, &Rothermel, 2014). The observer will note the starting distance between the focal subject and the observer, the distance where focal subject responded to the approaching observer and the distance when the focal subject fled into the water by dropping different colored flags when each event occurs (McGowan et al. 2014). This same approach will be used to determine if turtles FID changes when approached by groups of two or three people. In order to control for environmental conditions that can affect that behavior of ectotherms, red-eared sliders will be surveyed on sunny days with little to no wind and be surveyed at the same times each day. Our collected data will be analyzed using an ordinal regression analysis with FID as a dependent variable and group size and time of day as an independent