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Pseudemys concinna suwanniensis Carr, 1937
Suwannee River Cooter
Federal Protection: No US federal protection
State Protection: No Georgia state protection
Global Rank: G5T3
State Rank: S1
Element Locations Tracked in Biotics: Yes
SWAP 2015 Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN): No
SWAP 2025 Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN): No
2025 SGCN Priority Tier:
Element Occurrences (EOs) in Georgia: 3
Habitat Summary for element in Georgia: Tributaries of the Suwannee River; blackwater streams in areas with abundant snags and exposed limestone
The Suwannee River cooter (or Suwannee cooter) is the largest emydid turtle [turtles within the family Emydidae] in the United States. As is the case for all emydid turtles, this turtle has a total of 25 marginal scutes (including the cervical scute) on the perimeter of the carapace (upper shell). The elongated and flatted carapace (22-33 cm or 9-13 inches in length in adults) which is serrated posteriorly, is olive-brown with yellow to cream-colored markings, often possessing a “C”-shaped mark on the second lateral scute. The plastron (lower shell) is yellow to orange. Hatchlings (2.5-4.3 cm or 1-1.7 inches in carapace length) have a well-defined dark pattern on the plastron that follows the plastral seams, which often fades with age. Cusps on the upper jaw are short or absent. Suwannee cooters characteristically possess a yellow stripe extending down the front leg to the foot, light stripes on outer surface of hind feet, and as many as 11 head stripes that are cream, yellow, orange, or red.
The systematic treatment of cooters (Pseudemys concinna-floridana complex) is complicated and the taxonomic relationship of turtles within this complex continues to be debated; taxa within this complex (i.e., eastern river, Florida, peninsular, and Suwannee cooters) are considered to either be subspecies or full species, depending on the authority referenced (e.g., Pseudemys suwanniensis or P. concinna suwanniensis). Turtles within this complex can be differentiated from species within the red-bellied turtle [Pseudemys rubriventris] complex by lacking or having only short cusps on the upper jaw (turtles within red-bellied complex are characterized as possessing prominent, tooth-like cusps on the upper jaw).
The eastern river cooter (P. c. concinna) is allopatric (i.e., distributions not overlapping) with the Suwannee cooter, and these two taxa are therefore reproductively isolated within their respective distribution. Though both the eastern river cooter and the Suwannee cooter have well-defined patterns following the seams on the plastron, and both often possess a "C"-shaped mark on the second lateral scute of the carapace, the carapace of eastern river cooter usually has well developed concentric circles on other scutes, whereas the carapace of the Suwannee cooter often appears virtually plain black (especially when out of the water). The Coastal Plain cooter (P. c. floridana or P. f. floridana or P. floridana) lacks a "C"-shaped mark on its carapace and has an unmarked, uniformly yellow plastron. The peninsula cooter (Pseudemys peninsularis or P. floridana peninsularis), which only occurs in Florida, is characterized by merging stripes on the nape and top of the head that form “hairpins.”
In Georgia, the Suwannee cooter inhabits both clear and tannic stained (“blackwater”) portions of rivers, including deep springs, streams, and backwaters characterized by slow to moderate currents, abundant aquatic vegetation, sandy bottoms, and ample basking sites (e.g., rock outcrops or downed logs); a river may need to be of some minimum size to support this turtle.
Adults are almost entirely herbivorous; food items include cyanobacteria, diatoms, algae, aquatic moss, vascular plants, and occasionally snails, insects, and fish. Juveniles are more carnivorous than adults.
Fecundity is high for this turtle compared to other cooters; female Suwanee cooters lay as many as seven clutches (totaling around 100 eggs) annually. Sex of individual Suwannee cooters is determined by the temperature at which the egg incubates during embryonic development while in the nest; for this species, the pivotal temperature is 82.4°F (28°C) – males are predominately produced at this temperature and lower, while females are predominately produced at this temperature and higher (i.e., temperature sex determination pattern TSD – 1a).
This turtle is most active during the day. Foraging occurs during the early morning and late afternoon. When not basking Suwanee cooters are either resting or foraging on the bottom – much of their time is spent underwater (1.0-1.5 m or 3-5 ft deep) from a few minutes to as long as two hours between breaths. Because the lining of the nares of Suwanee cooter is hydrophobic, this turtle can breathe at the water’s surface without ever breaking the surface (once at the surface, the nares open at the bottom of a small depression within the film of the water’s surface).
Because Suwannee cooter adults are almost entirely herbivorous, they are not generally attracted to baited traps; however, hoop net traps augmented with extensions (fyke nets) designed to intercept turtles moving up or downstream can be deployed with some capture success. (Ironically, the first documented occurrence of this turtle from Georgia was the capture of an adult Suwannee cooter within a baited hoop trap set during an alligator snapping turtle survey effort.) Basking traps often prove most effective in the capture of this species. Use of such turtle traps are only legal in Georgia by issuance of a permit by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Alternatively, census of this species could be conducted through visual survey (spotting basking turtles with binoculars while floating downstream within a non-powered boat [i.e., a canoe or kayak]) within the Suwannee River and its tributaries.
Most of the distribution of the Suwannee cooter is within the Suwanee River drainage of peninsular Florida. Although first described from Florida as a new subspecies of Pseudemys floridana in 1937, the occurrence of this turtle in Georgia was not recognized until 1997. In Georgia, this turtle has been documented from larger portions of tributaries to the Suwanee River including the Alapha and Withlacoochee rivers, but the total extent of this turtle’s distribution in Georgia has not been thoroughly investigated. This turtle likely also occurs within larger stretches of the Suwannee River in Georgia possessing basking substrates in open sun. Though this turtle is known to move great distances and be highly aquatic, it only leaves the water to bask and nest; therefore, avenues of dispersal and gene flow are limited to stream channels, excluding terrestrial migration between drainages.
The major threat to the long-term conservation of this turtle is potential habitat degradation, through dredging, impoundment, or pollution of riparian habitat. Dredging and impoundment can effectively eliminate the availability of suitable riparian habitat through inundation and/or the physical removal of basking sites (course woody debris: log jams and snags that naturally accumulate within the stream channel). Possible sources of pollution include point sources (industrial pollution) and non-point sources, such as chemical runoff as well as siltation due to soil erosion from changes in land use along river corridors.
Perhaps the only protected areas within Georgia in which the Suwannee cooter might possibly occur include conservation land holdings containing stretches of the Suwannee River (e.g., Suwannee River Eco-Lodge). Though the status of this turtle is thought to be stable, neither a targeted survey nor a specific status assessment has been conducted for Georgia populations to date. Occurrences of the species are currently tracked within the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) conservation database. As is the case for all non-protected freshwater turtle species in Georgia, there is no closed season for the harvest of the Suwanee cooter in Georgia. However, Georgia’s freshwater turtle regulations (Chapter 391-4-16) do provide some restriction to harvest; no freshwater turtle eggs may be harvested from the wilds of Georgia and no more than 10 freshwater turtles (any combination of species) may be possessed without a commercial turtle permit. Further, turtle traps can only legally be deployed in Georgia within public or private waters by a permitted nuisance wildlife control operator or through the issuance of a commercial fishing permit in conjunction with a commercial turtle-farming permit issued by the Georgia DNR. Take from the wild in Florida (the only other state in which this turtle occurs), requires a permit.
Because no formal survey has ever been conducted for this species in Georgia, and because an understanding of this turtle’s distribution in Georgia is woefully incomplete, a targeted survey should be conducted throughout the probable distributional extent of this turtle in Georgia in order to collect baseline data and to assess the species’ current conservation status in the state. Impacts to riparian habitats from upland land use should be minimized; forestry best management practices including the implementation of stream management zones within the turtle’s range should be implemented during forestry operations in order to minimize erosion of the uplands and sedimentation input into adjacent stream channels.
Carr, A. F., Jr. 1937. A new turtle from Florida, with notes on Pseudemys floridana mobiliensis (Holbrook). Occasional Papers, Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan. 348: 1-7.
Jackson, D. R. 1995. Systematics of the Pseudemys concinna-floridana complex (Testudines: Emydidae): an alternative interpretation. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 1(4): 329-333.
Jensen, J. B. 1998. Geographic distribution: Pseudemys concinna suwanniensis [Lowndes Co., GA]. Herpetological Review 29(1): 50-51.
Seidel, M. E. 1995. How many species of cooter turtles and where is the scientific evidence?- a reply to Jackson. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 1(4): 333-336.
Seidel, M. E. 1994. Morphometric analysis and taxonomy of cooter and red-bellied turtles in the North American genus Pseudemys (Emydidae). Chelonian Conservation and Biology 1(2): 117-129.
Ward, J. P. and D. R. Jackson. 2008. Pseudemys concinna (Le Conte 1830) – river cooter. Conservation Biology of Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises: A Compilation Project of the IUCN/ISSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, A. G. J. Rhodin, P. C. H. Pritchard, P. P. van Dijk, R. A. Saumure, K. A. Buhlmann, and J. B. Iverson, eds. Chelonian Research Foundation Monographs No. 5, doi:10.3854/crm.5.006.concinna.v1.2008.
Thomas M. Floyd
T. Floyd, October 2023: original account