Study published in PeerJ by UCLA students highlights deadly trends threatening population stability of California’s only native turtle

by · June 12, 2020

Historical museum collections and contemporary population studies implicate roads and introduced predatory bullfrogs in the decline of western pond turtles. Nicholson EG, Manzo S, Devereux Z, Morgan TP, Fisher RN, Brown C, Dagit R, Scott PA, Shaffer HB. 2020. PeerJ 8:e9248 →

The students used a combination of historical museum samples (they measured every turtle in the major museum collections across northern and southern California), and published and unpublished field studies to quantify the effect of roads and non-native predatory bullfrogs on Western Pond Turtle populations across their range.