SREL Reprint # 2011
Deirochelys reticularia miaria (Western Chicken Turtle)
Buhlmann, K.A. and T.R. Johnson.
DEIROCHELYS RETICULARIA MIARIA (Western Chicken Turtle). USA:
MISSOURI: BUTLER Co: 2.4 km SEjct. State Road EE and Co. Road 269, Big
Cane Conservation Area, 90 m elev. 1-2 June 1995. K. A. Buhlmann and T. R.
Johnson. CM Photographic Acc. 36014.1-36014.4. Verified by Joseph T.
Collins. T\vo presumed juvenile females, both 3-4 years old (PL IO 1 and 1 17
mm), and one 5-year-old mature male (PL II 7 mm) captured in a semi-closed
canopy, bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) dominated, blackwater wetland.
Specimens were released. This species had not been observed in Missouri since
1962 (M. A. Nickerson, pers. obs.) or collected since 1957 (Anderson 1965,
'Me Reptiles of Missouri. Univ. Missouri Press, Columbia. 330 pp.). The western
chicken turtle is listed as endangered by the state of Missouri. Historically, chicken
turtles were likely common in the bald cypress/bottomland hardwood floodplain
swamp forests that have been cleared, ditched, and converted to agriculture,
primarily rice farming. Further survey work is needed in the Missouri bootheel
region to identify other suitable surviving patches of natural habitat that may
contain isolated populations of these turtles.
Submitted by KURT A. BUHLMANN, University of Georgia, Savannah River
Ecology Laboratory, Drawer E, Aiken, South Carolina 29802, USA, and TOM
R. JOHNSON, Missouri Department of Conservation, Natural History Section,
P. 0. Box 180, Jefferson City, Missouri 65102-0180, USA.
SREL Reprint #2011
Buhlmann, K.A. and T.R. Johnson. 1995. Deirochelys reticularia miaria (Western Chicken Turtle). Herpetological Review 26:209.
