Mud Turtle - Ecology

Ecology

The eastern mud turtle is an omnivore, which means that it eats both plants and animals as a source of nutrition. This turtle is said to eat earthworms, snails, crayfish, small crabs, spiders, beetles, larvae of different insects, caterpillars, frog eggs, tadpoles, small frogs, small salamanders, dead fish, algae, and different types of aquatic plants and grains. This turtle has a strong enough bite to crack open small shells like that of the snail and crab. It primarily feeds underwater scavenging into the mud and sand on the floor for some of the aquatic organisms and plants. These turtles are rarely seen feeding on land, but because they spend a short period of the year on land it is predicted that they also feed out of water the majority of the time.1

The eastern mud turtles do have a significant amount of predators as well. They are often preyed upon when they are still in the eggs or hatchlings. Usually opossums, weasels, skunks, raccoons, foxes, crows, snakes, shrews, and other carnivores will consume the eggs in the nest of a mud turtle. The small size of the hatchlings and younger turtles makes them an easy prey target for predators such as snakes and aquatic birds. Because of the small size of the turtle, it does not have many defense mechanisms. Its primary defense is to retreat back into the shell and use the double-hinge plastron to close up as tightly as possible. It also tries to bite when it feels threatened, but the bite is usually not enough force to fend off from larger predators.

In areas where K. subrubrum live there can be ample numbers of individuals. The population size of these turtles can reach numbers of around 200 individuals per hectare over the course of a year. Biomasses of mud turtles can be high as well, reaching around 30 kilograms per hectare. In areas of South Carolina the female to male ratio was one to one and had a survival rate of about the same for both male and female.