FGCU professor heads groundbreaking tortoise research at Delnor-Wiggins
Jacob Wozny, who seems to possess a natural instinct for discovering creatures hidden in the wild, spots a large male gopher tortoise obscured by brush in the dunes of Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park.
The Florida Gulf Coast University senior ambles through shrubs, picks up the tortoise, and carries it over to his professor, Dr. Phillip
Allman, and two other FGCU students, Jessica Bloodgood and Melissa Smith. They measure and weigh the tortoise and use GPS data to pinpoint the location where Mr. Wozny found him. Then Dr. Allman cuts tiny notches into the lower part of the tortoise’s hard top shell.
“Welcome to the study,” Dr. Allman, an FGCU associate professor of organismal biology, tells the tortoise, shortly after christening him with a new name, or identity: “2R, 8R, 10R.” The name is based on the points on the shell where Dr. Allman made the incisions.
Click the link to read more about the research…
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Photo from Louis Berney / Florida Weekly.
