Faunistic and distribution study of turtles in the southeast of Tehran province

Turtles are reptiles of Testudines order and they are considered as key species in the habitat, their presence contributes to the survival and sustainability of biodiversity. The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution and species diversity of turtles in the southeast of Tehran province. Turtle sampling was done in from spring to the end of summer 2015 was done monthly and based on field work in 12 stations but turtles were present in only 5 stations, there was a turtle, so that no turtles were found in Pishva and Pakdasht counties.56 turtles were collected from 5 stations in the southeast of the province. After complete biometry and sex determination, they were measured by identification keys. From the 56 collected sample, 36 were male and 20 were female. All species belonged to Mauremys caspica caspica subspecies. After identification, statistical analysis of data was performed using Excel and Spss software. Although numerically the highest number of samples was related to Shahzadeh Mohammad-Ijdan and Bahram Lake stations and the lowest number was observed at Davoodabad village station, but statistically it was found that there is no significant difference in the distribution of this species between stations that the sample was found (p>0.05). The male to female sex ratio was 1: 1. There was also a significant difference between sex and tail length, distance from Plastron to cloaca and distance from cloaca to end of tail (p<0.01).