WPT vs RES
Hats off to Matthew Bettelheim for organizing and pulling together this succinct flyer that lays out the basic ID characteristics of native Western Pond Turtles compared to Common Pond Slider. This is great for learning the basics of western pond turtle ID. It won’t help you ID all the odd non-native turtles released in California, but it will help ID the most common non-native turtle: pond sliders or red-eared slider. This is openly shared with the goal of education leading to correct identification of our native special status species versus potentially competitive non-natives, which then may help with conservation and management efforts. Matthew is graciously hosting this from his website as a jpg image poster and a PDF, along with his sage advice on iNat or WordPress.
This was a team effort resulting from many discussions of awkward turtles and revelations between Matthew, Rachel, and I, with helpful line drawings from Annie. Thanks everyone!
One of the most tricky look-a-likes to western pond turtles are melanistic sliders. For a deep dive on melanistic sliders, check out Lovich et al. 1990 chapter titled The Development and Significance of Melanism in the Slider Turtle.
