2010/09/01 by Andrew M. Grosse, Sean C. Sterrett, John C. Maerz · 11 citations
Environmental Science · #Amphibian and Reptile Biology #Biology #Ecology #Environmental science #Fish Ecology and Management Studies #Fishery #Foraging #Predation #Turbidite #Turbidity #Turtle (robot) #Turtle Biology and Conservation
paper · doi:10.1643/ce-09-162
published in Copeia 2010(3), 463-467 (American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists)
openalex publication_date 2010/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
The effect of increased turbidity levels on aquatic organisms is an increasing concern for aquatic biologists. Recent studies show reduced foraging efficiency of drift-feeding fish species, which are highly visual predators, with increasing water turbidity. Similar to fish, many aquatic turtle species are highly visual aquatic predators that may be negatively affected by increasing water turbidity. We used Eastern Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) to test the hypothesis that increasing water turbidity would decrease prey capture efficiency. We classically conditioned eight C. picta to search for a food item when presented with a novel stimulus, and then measured the time it took each turtle to find a prey item under a range of 26 turbidity levels (≤40 nephelometric turbidity units, NTUs) presented in a random order. All turtles were successfully trained within 29 days to search for the food item when presented with the stimulus. Turbidity had no effect on the probability of successful prey capture. Turtles located the prey item in 97% of trials regardless of turbidity level. Turbidity had a minor effect on time to prey capture, increasing from an average of 30 seconds at a turbidity level of 2 NTUs to 55 seconds at 40 NTUs. Overall, turbidity level explained approximately 2% of the variation in the time it took a turtle to locate a prey item. These results contrast sharply with a nearly identical study, which showed that turbidity explained 70% and 90% of the variation in drift-feeding fish reactive distance and prey capture success respectively, and that a turbidity of only 9–10 NTUs reduced fish foraging performance by 50%. We suggest that resilience to turbidity effects on foraging proficiency among generalist species may be important to understanding their persistence in more degraded aquatic environments compared to more specialized species.