| Identification Comments: | |
| Subspecies Comments: | |
| Food Habits: | Eats a wide variety of herbaceous vegetation, particularly grasses and the flowers of annual plants. They also forage on perennial grasses, woody perennials, cacti, and non-native species such as red brome and red-stem filaree (USFWS 2008). |
| Phenology Comments: | |
| Reproduction Comments: | Sexual maturity reached between 13 and 20 years. Low reproductive rates. The number of eggs as well as the number of clutches produced in a season is dependent on a variety of factors including environment, habitat, availability of forage and drinking water, and physiological condition. Success rate of clutches has proven difficult to measure, but predation appears to play an important role in clutch failure (USFWS 2008). |
| Migration Mobility: | |
| Habitat Comments: | Occupies a variety of habitats from flats and slopes dominated by creosote bush scrub at lower elevations to rocky slopes in blackbrush and juniper woodland ecotones (transition zone) at higher elevations. Requires soils that are friable enough for digging burrows, but firm enough so that burrows do not collapse (USFWS 2008). Also uses caliche caves as shelters. |
| Ecology comments: | Long-lived (70-100 yrs) and slow-growing, they reach sexual maturity at 13-20 years. Desert tortoises have low reproductive rates. Much of their life is spent in burrows. In late winter or early spring they emerge from their overwintering burrows and remain active through the fall (USFWS 2008). |
| Version Date: | |
