2 James L. Knight and Raymond K. Loraine 



Recent collections and observations on two specimens of L. getulus 

 from the Savannah River Plant (SRP), in Aiken, Barnwell and Allen- 

 dale counties, South Carolina, shed additional light on turtle egg-eating 

 propensities of L. getulus and indicate that at least a small subset of the 

 population of L. getulus on the SRP may search out nesting turtles and 

 wait for them to lay their eggs, as suggested by Wright and Bishop 

 (1915). 



On 27 May 1984, one of us (RKL) removed a L. getulus from a 

 funnel snake trap along a drift fence near the northeast side of Ellenton 

 Bay, a Carolina bay in the Aiken County portion of the SRP. This 

 snake, a female with a snout-vent length (SVL) of 1118 mm, regurgi- 

 tated 9 turtle eggs (6 ruptured, 3 intact) that, based on shape, appeared 

 to represent several different turtle taxa. One hard-shelled egg was 

 immediately referable to the family Kinosteridae; one was light-colored 

 and round, apparently Chelydra; and the remaining 7 could have been 

 assignable to any of several species of emydid turtles. 



On 22 June 1984, one of us (JLK) collected a female L. getulus 

 (1257 mm SVL) along a sandy road that courses parallel to, and aver- 

 ages about 50 m from, the edge of the Savannah River Swamp, ca. 2 km 

 east-southeast of the mouth of Pen Branch Creek, in Barnwell County. 

 The collector had stopped to capture a Terrapene Carolina that was in 

 the process of excavating a nest chamber (she later laid 3 eggs in the 

 lab). When first observed, the snake was less than a meter from the 

 turtle, with its head and neck elevated about 10 to 12 cm off the ground 

 and directed toward the turtle. The snake was captured, placed in a 

 collecting bag and, upon returning to the lab, was found to have regur- 

 gitated 4 hard-shelled eggs (2 intact, 1 damaged, 1 crushed). The snake 

 was caged by itself and, after 3 days, defecated parts of, minimally, an 

 additional 13 kinosternid eggs, 3 of them unbroken. 



Three species of kinosternid turtles have been collected at SRP: 

 Sternotherus odoratus and Kinosternon subrubrum (Gibbons and Pat- 

 terson 1978), and Kinosternon bauri (Lamb 1983). The eggs are most 

 likely of S. odoratus and /or K. subrubrum, as K. bauri is comparatively 

 rare on the SRP, the northernmost record of occurrence for the species. 

 Unfortunately, measurements of the intact eggs yielded no information 

 as to their identity, for all three species lay eggs of approximately the 

 same size. 



Of particular interest was the number of turtle eggs present in the 

 second snake. Gibbons (1983), discussing SRP K. subrubrum, gave a 

 mean of 3.03 eggs/clutch, range 1-5 (N = 161). Tinkle (1961) divided a 

 sample of adult female S. odoratus into two arbitrary size classes, the 

 smaller exhibiting an average clutch size of 2.0 eggs and the larger aver- 



