Earticle

Mauremys reevesii called a Reeve's turtle is listed as an endangered species II and natural monument, # 453 in South Korea. During the last decades, several comprehensive studies have been conducted on the ecology of this turtle, but the evaluation of artificial habitats constructed to use in restoration projects was not done. To investigate daily and seasonal basking pattern of the 16 Reeve's turtles in artificial pond habitat, we videomonitored the turtles for 90 days (between 17 May to 1 July and between 23 Sep to 5 Nov). Four basking behaviors (start time of basking, end time of basking, the number of basking for a day, mean basking time of turtle) obtained from the video data were compared with local weather factors (temperature, humidity, rock temperatures, water temperature, rainfall, wind velocity, daylight hours, amount of clouds, the time of sunrise) using a Spearman correlation test. Based on the results, air temperature, humidity, rock temperature, water temperature, amount of clouds and the time of sunrise significantly affected turtle’s basking behaviors. During the study period, Mauremys reevesii basked on the rock between 4:30a.m. and 8:40p.m. and the number of basing turtles reached its peak at 12:40p.m. No basking turtles were found after 25 Oct., possibly indicating the start of their hibernation. Our findings could be useful to determine the requirements of artificial habitat, and to protect this endangered species in the wild.

In order to reveal the effect of altitudinal change on Rana dybowskii, we examined the developmental stage of embryos using site-shifting eggs. The developing eggs were collected from two different localities of 269m and 1,114m from the sea level and shifted into three different altitudes (27, 308 and 1,098m). The preliminary results have shown that we have found the tadpoles rather than developing embryos within the egg-clutches in low altitude site (average 25m) but the early-stage embryos have been mostly found in high altitude site rather than tadpoles (average 1,101m). The results from site-shifting experiments we found that the eggs of 27m showed the fastest development procedure and earliest hatching time and those of 1,098m did the slowest development and the latest hatching time. The measurement results of the hatched tadpoles of 269m-eggs from three different altitudes showed that the highly significant differences in the least square means in snout-ventral length (SVL) (P < 0.001), although there is no difference in head width (HW) (P > 0.05). The tadpoles hatched were smaller in higher altitude site. On the other hand, the levels of SVL and HW in 1,114m-eggs were significantly greater in low altitude tadpoles than those from high altitude individuals (P < 0.001). Difference in temperature of air and water with change in altitude might be the influencing factor for embryonic development of R. dybowskii. In conclusion, this study suggested that monitoring of developmental procedure of amphibian plays an important role for understanding the climate change and global warming as they are one of the biological indicators.

Different thermoregulatory optima may exist even between sympatric species. In this study, we investigated daily activity pattern and thermoregulation in two cohabiting colubrid snakes, diurnal Dione's ratsnake (Elaphe dione) and nocturnal Red-banded snake (Dinodon rufozonatum) which have different observational patterns although their ecological and morphological traits are very similar. To elucidate the daily activity pattern and thermoregulation of the two species, we video-monitored 6 E. dione (♂: 3, ♀: 3) and 6 D. rufozonatum (♂: 3, ♀: 3) in an experimental vivarium between June 10 and 25, 2014. Snake body temperature were simultaneously measured by insertion a temperature hobo into the cloaca to determine the relationship between air and body temperature. Elaphe dione moved throughout a day while D. rufozonatum mainly moved between 8pm-6am, a night time. Dinodon rufozonatum had a higher Te-Tb value (operational environmental temperature - body temperature) as 0.76℃ than 0.65℃ of E. dione. While, the daily average body temperature (24.1℃) of D. rufozonatum was not different with that of E. dione (23.8℃).