URTD & Environmentally-Threatened Gopher Tortoises

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

The gopher tortoise is an environmentally-threatened species that is critically important for maintenance of upland habitats, biodiversity, and community ecology. Over 360 vertebrate and invertebrate species utilize gopher tortoise burrows as a refuge. Gopher tortoises also help maintain habitat diversity by dispersal of plant. Both upper respiratory tract disease (URTD) and anthropogenic effects such as development, habitat destruction and fragmentation are believed to play major roles in population declines. The long term goal of this project is to understand the relationship between URTD and tortoise population dynamics, with special emphasis on the impact of anthropogenic effects such as relocation practices and habitat alteration on disease transmission. This project will use an interdisciplinary approach to determine the interactive roles of human intervention, habitat quality, and bacterial factors on spread of disease in natural populations of gopher tortoises. A mathematical model will be developed to predict disease transmission. Lack of knowledge with respect to potential infectious diseases present in wild populations and the impact of disease on relocation and restocking efforts, population parameters, and long term population well-being creates a major dilemma for scientists, wildlife biologists, conservationists, and public policy makers. The model developed in this project can be used to make more effective, rational, and critical management decisions designed to protect gopher tortoise populations and the biological diversity that tortoises support in upland habitats. The management practice of relocation intended to preserve gopher tortoises may actually resemble natural migration patterns of humans. Important new insights into the relationship between population movements and transmission dynamics of an infectious chronic respiratory disease will be obtained in a natural tortoise population that mimics the life history of humans.