Nouvelle publication d'Antonio : Tortues-boîtes à bébé ! (Antonio's new publication: Baby box turtles!)

While we thoroughly enjoyed the cuteness of our baby lizards from our experiments this summer, I maintain that by far the cutest of the animals is the baby box turtle. While unfortunately cuteness was never quantified, it is very exciting to see a new paper out this week by Team PODARCIS member Antonio Cordero in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. In fact, Antonio earned the cover photo for the new issue!

In this paper, Antonio and colleagues demonstrate that the development of the hinge in the box turtle shell, important for defense against predators, develops when the turtles are between 3-5 years old. This in noteworthy because generally the embryonic stage is the focus of studies on how development shapes morphology -- but this work shows that in fact these changes might happen much later in development. Find the full paper here:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/1888/20181585

Very cool work -- many congrats to Antonio for this new publication in a fine journal!