124 
Michael D. Stuart and Grover C. Miller 
the Blue Ridge and Coastal Plain. Turtles were sexed or grouped as 
juveniles if immature, weighed, and measured. Collection data, includ- 
ing locality, habitat, and date, were recorded. Gut contents were identi- 
fied during examination for parasites. Eighty-four specimens were col- 
lected as road kills or while they were trying to cross highways. An 
additional 20 were collected in their natural habitat, in part with the aid 
of a border terrier that was trained by being encouraged to play with 
captive turtles and then rewarded for finding hidden turtles. 
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 
Adult box turtles may be sexed by a series of secondary sexual 
characteristics. Males were identified by their slightly concave posterior 
plastral plate, heavier and more strongly curved hindclaws, and longer 
and thicker precloacal portion of the tail. The carapace of the males 
tended to be flatter and lower than that of the females, but the ratio of 
carapace length to plastron length was almost identical for both sexes 
(Fig. 1 and 2). Most of the males had a light red color to the iris of the 
eye while the females were usually brownish, but this characteristic was 
not completely reliable. 
Stickel (1950) classed specimens of T. c. Carolina from Maryland as 
juveniles if they had a straight-line carapace length of less than 107 mm, 
and Schwartz and Schwartz (1974) classed juvenile T. c. triunguis from 
Missouri as having a carapace length of less than 110 mm. Auffenberg 
and Iverson (1979) listed male size at sexual maturity as a carapace 
length of 100 mm and females at 130 mm. The smallest sexually mature 
individual taken in this study, as determined by condition of the gonads, 
was a female with a carapace curve length of 124 mm and a plastron 
length of 100 mm. Consequently, this plastron length was selected for 
separating juveniles and adults. 
Means and ranges for weight, plastron length, and curved carapace 
length for males, females, and juveniles are in Table 1. Stickel (1950) 
reported a male:female sex ratio of 1.00:1.09 (N = 245) on 42.6 acres in 
Maryland with juveniles forming less than 10% of the population, and 
Dolbeer (1969) gave a ratio 1.61:1.00 on 22 acres in Tennessee. Schwartz 
and Schwartz gave a ratio of 55 males to 45 females (N = 698) in T. c. 
triunguis on a 55-acre plot in Missouri; juveniles composed 18 to 25% of 
this population. The total ratio of males to females to juveniles collected 
in this North Carolina study was 37:43:24, which agrees most closely 
with Stickel’s data except in the greater percentage of juveniles (Fig. 3). 
Ernst and Barbour (1972) state that Terrapene Carolina is found 
predominantly in open woodlands but may be found in pastures and 
marshy meadows in the Northeast, and Martof et al. (1980) reported 
