Abstract or Keywords
Recent technological advances have allowed wildlife ecologists to begin to understand the complexity of relationships among individuals within populations. Given gopher tortoises have high site fidelity, naturally exist in high population densities, and are long lived, their population social structures may be among the most complex within Reptilia. Prior studies have demonstrated that gopher tortoises form non-random interactions with each other, described as “cliques” in a southern Georgia population of tortoises. Herein, we tested for the presence of this complex social structure at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve in Pinellas County, FL, using camera traps placed at 12 active tortoise burrows and set to record every 5 seconds for an entire year during daylight hours. We found that cliques are not present within this population when we only considered social interactions as co-occurrence of two individuals. However, when we only considered interactions to be positive, namely burrow sharing between same- or opposite-sex pairs and burrow chasing between opposite-sex pairs, we found that cliques were significantly present. This study has implications for basic understanding of sociality in turtles and also conservation efforts for this intensively-managed species.