more thoughts on the burrow temps...these from KSC scientist

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: Rebecca Smith, who works on the KSC project, and I email frequently. She gave me permission to post her comments on the dialogue last week about burrow temps. Below is a copy of her email: : : Hey Dean, I, like you, am skeptical. I don’t believe that the temperature stays constant at 70 degrees. A friend of mine that keeps tortoises in Gainesville says he thinks they may stay above 50 down at the bottom. I really don’t have any data, but there may be some out there. : Another point that Karen and I have been discussing: no snake in its right mind (indigo or otherwise) would put its eggs anywhere in the path of a gopher tortoise. Talk about a brainless bulldozer. If they use tortoise burrows as nest sites, I would think it would be old abandoned burrows, and the microclimate of those is bound to be very different than a nice, clean, active burrow. I have found corn snake eggs in tortoise burrows a couple of times, but they were place behind roots on the side of the burrow near the mouth (where the temperature would fluctuate more closely with the outside temperature). I hope that Karen will be answering some of these questions soon. : Rebecca B. Smith : Wildlife Ecologist : Dynamac Corporation

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