A mission to save turtles
Andrew, MVCC grad, ‘our family’s very own emerging Jane Goodall,’ heading back to Belize on turtle conservation trip
Cora Dyslin, of Tinley Park, has been fascinated by animals since she was a little girl, and her love of creatures and conservation will soon lead her back to Belize in Central America to complete her research project on an endangered turtle species.
Her research project, “Daily and Seasonal Activity Patterns of the Critically Endangered Central American River Turtle (Dermatemys mawii),” is overseen by Day Ligon, a biology professor at Missouri State University, where Dyslin is a graduate student. Ligon is in charge of the MSU Turtle Ecology Lab.
Although Dyslin already spent six months in Belize last summer, she is going back to complete her field research. Her work will be funded in part by a grant of more than $7,000 that she received from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund.
“The grant is helping to fund a big part of the project, which is international travel from here and back to Belize for me and Professor Day as well,” Dyslin said. “It’s continuing to fund the ability to travel to my field site and my accommodations when I go out there for four or five days this time. It allows me to go back out there to finish collecting my data.”
The Andrew High School graduate completed her bachelor’s degree in environmental studies with a minor in biology from Northern Illinois University in 2017 after finishing an associate degree from Moraine Valley Community College. She worked at the San Diego Zoo Global Institute for Conservation Research before joining MSU’s Turtle Ecology Lab in 2021, which was her “first experience with turtles,” she said, adding she’s more focused on studying conservation than a specific species.
“I was drawn to Day’s lab because of the applied nature of some of the work but also the fact that it was hands-on with an endangered species,” she said. “It gave me an opportunity to travel and was aligned with my overall career goals to work hands-on with animals.”
She took the opportunity to travel right away, moving to Belize in May 2021 and spending six months living at the field station Ligon owns while studying Central American river turtles, known locally as hicatee.
“That’s when I first started my project, so I established my sample population of hicatee and attached data loggers and sonic transmitters to their carapaces so I could locate them. The data loggers are capturing activity data,” Dyslin said.
“I would go every six weeks to my field site and try to capture as many turtles as I could. And when I would capture them I would be able to download the activity data that is saved on the logger attached to them and I would clear the memory space and rerelease them so six weeks later I could have more activity data.”
As part of her research, she captured 24 turtles and attached data loggers and sonic transmitters. Collecting data “involves going out in scuba gear and diving in the river with underwater headphones and a handheld receiver to capture the noise that comes out of the transmitters so I can relocate them,” she said.
“It’s long days involving being in the water almost all day and trying to get almost all the turtles I can. And then on the other side, the non-field side, is looking at that data and looking at the activity data I’m getting and trying to figure out patterns.”
Understanding when they’re most active in the water allows researchers to know when the turtles are most vulnerable.
“We don’t know a ton about this species.
They are categorized as endangered, and their major threat is human predation, hunting. It’s very common in Belize to eat turtle meat,” Dyslin explained.
“So ideally by understanding the hicatee — not only their daily activity patterns but their seasonal patterns — we’ll be able to know when they’re most active, move toward the surface of the water and know when they are more vulnerable to hunters.”
When she goes back this summer, Dyslin will conclude data collection.
“When I recapture my turtles this summer, I’ll be removing their transmitters and loggers and they’ll be their unbothered selves,” she said. “I’ll come back to my second semester at MSU … and really start getting into data analysis. And lots of writing. And then hopefully eventually earn a master’s degree.”
Dyslin said her parents, Carol and Christienne Dyslin, think she’s “crazy” but are very supportive.
“This is something I’ve been interested in and I’ve never been afraid of doing something a little crazy for the sake of science,” she said. “They worry about me and some of the aspects of being a field biologist. It’s a hard job. But they’re very supportive and really, really excited for me.”
Cora has “always loved animals,” Christienne Dyslin said. “One of her early childhood holiday gift requests was a veterinarian kit with a stethoscope, lab coat, and kennel for “treating” her stuffed animals. As a young adult, Cora volunteered for local environmental cleanups, she used her own savings to take a field trip to Belize to learn about endangered reef life, and as a university student she did volunteer work in prairie conservation.”
She was pleased her daughter won a research grant.
“I was super proud of her choice to attend graduate school and of her receiving the grant,” she said. “She has always been a self-starter and highly motivated toward ecology and conservation, so I can’t say that her success surprised me; just that I am very proud of her accomplishments.”
Carol Dyslin is equally proud of Cora.
“The fact that Cora’s research has taken her to
Belize is of no surprise since she gravitates toward tropical climates! Dr. Ligon’s passion for turtle conservation really captured Cora’s imagination,” Carol Dyslin said.
“As a parent, knowing that Cora is such a very strong woman helps us to worry less despite the rigors of biological field work in the jungle. We think of Cora as our family’s very own emerging Jane Goodall.”
Ligon, who has done his own research in Belize, said his role is to lend advice to Dyslin when questions arise, as well as “assisting with the logistics of working in a foreign country and making the kinds of connections that someone needs to do work like this. And when she comes back with a pile of data, I will help her poke it with a stick,” he said.
“It’s a huge data set. She’s going to have 21 million data points,” he said. “The process of analysis will be a very time consuming but a very interesting process.
“Daunting!” Dyslin interjected.
Ligon stressed that researching turtles is vital.
“Turtles are one of the — if not the most — endangered classes of vertebrates. Primates are tied with a close second, but there’s no other group that is that more threatened,” he said, with “more than half of the species” listed as being a conservation concern. “Most are very worrying and in steep decline.”
The focus of Dyslin’s research, the hicatee, has been on an actively maintained list of the most endangered turtles in the world “since its inception,” Ligon said. “It truly is by all the measures the most endangered species on the planet.”
That said, one of the reasons he loves his job is because he is training conservation biologists to do research.
“I’m less concerned with Cora walking away with specific knowledge of a species of animal. What I really want to see is when students walk away with the ability to do research from beginning and end,” he explained. “That’s from the beginning of the project and acquiring funding and executing the project all the way to publication. I really love it when students leave and they are just full scientists.”