Assessing the Impact of Environment on the Color of Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) in the Wild

TL;DR

This study explores how environmental factors affect the coloration of wild painted turtles, finding that coloration is complex and not fully explained by environmental variables.

Contribution

The study provides new insights into the environmental influence on wild turtle coloration, which has not been previously measured in this species.

Findings

Females had brighter carapaces than males.

Plastron brightness varied with water clarity and plant density.

Environmental factors did not predict carotenoid chroma as expected.

Abstract

Animal coloration is a complex phenotype that may be affected by genetics, evolution, ecology, and environment. Disentangling the impact of environment on phenotype can often be done in laboratory studies, but the results do not necessarily correspond to the natural variation present in the wild. Painted turtles are a brightly colored freshwater species that inhabit a variety of environments in North America. There is known to be plasticity in the melanin coloration of the shell of painted turtles in a lab setting, but this has not been measured in the wild. The bright skin coloration that gives painted turtles their name is caused by carotenoids, which can only be obtained from an organism's diet in vertebrates. Though the availability of carotenoids likely varies between environments, and there is evidence that some of the carotenoid‐based coloration in this species is a visual signal, it is unknown if or how environmental variation impacts coloration in the wild. To address this, we measured the effect of the environment on turtle coloration by assessing multiple populations of painted turtles in northern Wisconsin. We measured water clarity and aquatic plant density at each site where turtles were caught. We found that females had brighter carapaces than males, and that plastron brightness varied with water clarity and plant density, despite its ventral orientation. We also found that neither water clarity nor plant density predicted carotenoid chroma, despite reason to believe that light environment and carotenoid availability should impact a visual signal. These findings suggest that colorful phenotypic traits in this turtle species are complex and their potential role as visual signals requires more research. It is crucial to understand the different phenotypes of painted turtles since coloration may influence fitness in this species, and since laboratory studies are unable to represent natural variation.

Painted turtles have bright colors with no known function. We test hypotheses for natural variation in color in this species using visual ecology and signaling theory.

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