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Tuatara: Reproduction
Summary: Join Kiersten as she takes you on a slow look at tuatara reproduction.
For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
Show Notes:
“Novel mating behaviors in male tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) expand our understanding of reptile courtship,” by Sarah K. Lamar, Diane K. Ormsby, and Nicola J. Nelson. Austral Ecology, vol 49, Issue 2. https://doi.org/10.1111/aec13496
“Tuatara.” San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, https://animals.sandiegozoo.org
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
Transcript
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating.
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
Welcome back to Ten Things I Like About after a year end break. I hope the new year treats you well and opportunities abound. Let’s get started! We will continue with Tuatara. The third thing I like about tuatara is reproduction.
As we travel along with the journey of discovery with tuatara, I want to pose a question to you. Is the tuatara a lizard? Or is it something else? Based on the physical description I outlined in the first episode, they seem to be lizards, if not very lizard like. But I want you to keep this question in the back of your mind as we progress through each new episode. We will revisit this question at the end of this series and see what we all think.
Okay, let’s talk about how baby tuatara are made. Tuatara mating and reproduction is not like anything else in the reptile world. Long incubation periods, extensive maturation, and unusual consummation marks the reproductive cycle of the tuatara.
It all begins sometime between January and March when males begin showing off to attract a mate. Remember those spines that they have on their neck and back, well they are there for pretties. They can fan out and shake the larger crest of spines in hopes of attracting a lady. For a long time we thought this was all the males did during the breeding season, but a study that looked more closely at males on Takapourewa Island revealed many more tricks they use to catch the ladies eye.
Boys will come a courting at a female’s burrow and it can get complicated and lengthy. It might be a good idea that she gets to stay at home once all the excitement begins. First, the male adopts body positions that make him look big, such as inflating the body and gular region (that’s the chin area), elevating his body off the forest floor (the up part of a push-up), and erecting those spines on his neck and back. Next, the male will begin the slow proud walk, also known as stolzer Gang, in a circle around the female. He’ll perform this slow exaggerated walk in concentric circles, pausing occasionally, and decreasing the circle circumference with each pass. If the female is interested, she will leave her burrow entrance, allow the male to paw at her, and then mount her from behind.
If there are obstacles in the male’s circular path, they will climb over, or go around. If the obstacle is too big to conquer, they’ll just shorten the circle to a semi-circle. I mean you gotta give them props for not getting distracted from their goal. The proud walk can last up to 44 minutes.
A few novel behaviors were observed by researchers studying the Takapourewa population. Mirrored head bobbing between the male and female was observed a few times, something that has not been seen in reptiles before. The male would bob his head a specific number of times and when he paused, the female would bob the small numbers of times. This was a very exciting discovery that will need more research to determine what it means and if it is found in other populations of tuatara, but how very interesting.
Vocalizations in tuatara are typically limited to croaks emitted when handled, or during aggressive moments between males, but these researchers encountered several males that purred during the mating process. We aren’t sure what this means or if this is a wide spread behavior but it is another exciting discovery.
Once the female has accepted the male and he mounts her from behind, he positions his pelvis so that both of their cloacas come in contact. This is how he spreads his sperm to her. Males do not have special reproductive organs like most other reptiles. So they perform the cloacal kiss to pass their sperm to the female. Male sperm are fast swimmers. They are actually the fastest sperm in the reptile kingdom, moving two to four times faster than any other reptile’s sperm. The female can store the sperm for 10 to 12 months.
Before all this happens, the female has been working on creating the eggs inside her body. It can take three years for a female to create and egg with yolk and an additional 7 to 8 months to create the shell. A female is only able to successfully breed every three to five years.
Once the eggs are ready and fertilized, the female can lay 1 to 19 soft-shelled, white eggs in her burrow. Incubation is extremely long at 12 to 15 months! Yes, it takes a year or more for baby tuatara to hatch into the world. This is unheard of in reptiles. Maybe not the best survival tactic for a species, but as we can see tuatara don’t do anything quickly.
Similar to some other reptiles, temperature during incubation is important to the sex of a hatchling. Warmer temperatures produce males while cooler temperatures create females.
The eggs are on their own during incubation and the hatchlings have to fight for life alone as soon as they emerge from the burrow. Neither parent remains at the nest to protect the eggs or hatchlings. If they survive their early years, they have to wait ten to twenty years before they can join the reproductive cycle.
In this episode, I think we’ve proven that tuatara don’t do anything fast and that’s why their reproductive cycle is my third favorite thing about them.
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change.
Join me next week for another exciting episode about the tuatara.
(Piano Music plays)
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.
View all episodes
By Kiersten GibizovSummary: Join Kiersten as she takes you on a slow look at tuatara reproduction.
For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
Show Notes:
“Novel mating behaviors in male tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) expand our understanding of reptile courtship,” by Sarah K. Lamar, Diane K. Ormsby, and Nicola J. Nelson. Austral Ecology, vol 49, Issue 2. https://doi.org/10.1111/aec13496
“Tuatara.” San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, https://animals.sandiegozoo.org
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
Transcript
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating.
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
Welcome back to Ten Things I Like About after a year end break. I hope the new year treats you well and opportunities abound. Let’s get started! We will continue with Tuatara. The third thing I like about tuatara is reproduction.
As we travel along with the journey of discovery with tuatara, I want to pose a question to you. Is the tuatara a lizard? Or is it something else? Based on the physical description I outlined in the first episode, they seem to be lizards, if not very lizard like. But I want you to keep this question in the back of your mind as we progress through each new episode. We will revisit this question at the end of this series and see what we all think.
Okay, let’s talk about how baby tuatara are made. Tuatara mating and reproduction is not like anything else in the reptile world. Long incubation periods, extensive maturation, and unusual consummation marks the reproductive cycle of the tuatara.
It all begins sometime between January and March when males begin showing off to attract a mate. Remember those spines that they have on their neck and back, well they are there for pretties. They can fan out and shake the larger crest of spines in hopes of attracting a lady. For a long time we thought this was all the males did during the breeding season, but a study that looked more closely at males on Takapourewa Island revealed many more tricks they use to catch the ladies eye.
Boys will come a courting at a female’s burrow and it can get complicated and lengthy. It might be a good idea that she gets to stay at home once all the excitement begins. First, the male adopts body positions that make him look big, such as inflating the body and gular region (that’s the chin area), elevating his body off the forest floor (the up part of a push-up), and erecting those spines on his neck and back. Next, the male will begin the slow proud walk, also known as stolzer Gang, in a circle around the female. He’ll perform this slow exaggerated walk in concentric circles, pausing occasionally, and decreasing the circle circumference with each pass. If the female is interested, she will leave her burrow entrance, allow the male to paw at her, and then mount her from behind.
If there are obstacles in the male’s circular path, they will climb over, or go around. If the obstacle is too big to conquer, they’ll just shorten the circle to a semi-circle. I mean you gotta give them props for not getting distracted from their goal. The proud walk can last up to 44 minutes.
A few novel behaviors were observed by researchers studying the Takapourewa population. Mirrored head bobbing between the male and female was observed a few times, something that has not been seen in reptiles before. The male would bob his head a specific number of times and when he paused, the female would bob the small numbers of times. This was a very exciting discovery that will need more research to determine what it means and if it is found in other populations of tuatara, but how very interesting.
Vocalizations in tuatara are typically limited to croaks emitted when handled, or during aggressive moments between males, but these researchers encountered several males that purred during the mating process. We aren’t sure what this means or if this is a wide spread behavior but it is another exciting discovery.
Once the female has accepted the male and he mounts her from behind, he positions his pelvis so that both of their cloacas come in contact. This is how he spreads his sperm to her. Males do not have special reproductive organs like most other reptiles. So they perform the cloacal kiss to pass their sperm to the female. Male sperm are fast swimmers. They are actually the fastest sperm in the reptile kingdom, moving two to four times faster than any other reptile’s sperm. The female can store the sperm for 10 to 12 months.
Before all this happens, the female has been working on creating the eggs inside her body. It can take three years for a female to create and egg with yolk and an additional 7 to 8 months to create the shell. A female is only able to successfully breed every three to five years.
Once the eggs are ready and fertilized, the female can lay 1 to 19 soft-shelled, white eggs in her burrow. Incubation is extremely long at 12 to 15 months! Yes, it takes a year or more for baby tuatara to hatch into the world. This is unheard of in reptiles. Maybe not the best survival tactic for a species, but as we can see tuatara don’t do anything quickly.
Similar to some other reptiles, temperature during incubation is important to the sex of a hatchling. Warmer temperatures produce males while cooler temperatures create females.
The eggs are on their own during incubation and the hatchlings have to fight for life alone as soon as they emerge from the burrow. Neither parent remains at the nest to protect the eggs or hatchlings. If they survive their early years, they have to wait ten to twenty years before they can join the reproductive cycle.
In this episode, I think we’ve proven that tuatara don’t do anything fast and that’s why their reproductive cycle is my third favorite thing about them.
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change.
Join me next week for another exciting episode about the tuatara.
(Piano Music plays)
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.