Taking Flight

Kelly O’Neil presses her face against the glass of an incubator where a clutch of six tiny turkeys are beginning to emerge from their eggs.

As the first hatchlings, called poults, peck their way out, O’Neil, a University of Florida postdoctoral researcher, cheers them on.

“Hey, little guy!” she says. “Welcome to the world!”

If the first thing the poults see is O’Neil, they will begin to bond with her as their mother — a process known as imprinting — and enter a crucial race for survival, a process UF wildlife researchers hope to facilitate.

Researchers at the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Game Lab are studying wild turkeys from the nest to adulthood to understand why turkey populations in the southeastern United States are declining — and what land managers can do to reverse the trend.

For decades, wild turkeys were considered one of North America’s great conservation success stories. Due to hunting and habitat loss, the birds were on the brink of extinction in the early 1900s, with their population down from millions to less than 200,000 by the 1930s.

Beginning in the 1970s, however, regulated hunting and habitat restoration programs caused populations to rebound, reaching a high of about 6.5 million birds, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation.

But in recent years, that trend has reversed — likely driven by sweeping changes to the Southern landscape that have fundamentally impacted whether young turkeys survive.

“One thing that is very consistent … and probably explains a lot of what we’re seeing … is habitat,” says Marcus Lashley, an associate professor of wildlife ecology and conservation. 

Across the Southeast, the amount, quality and connectivity of turkey habitat have all changed in recent decades, driven by development, intensifying land use and shifts in how forests and fields are managed. As that habitat base shrinks or degrades, Lashley says, the number of birds the landscape can support declines with it.

But the issue is not just how much habitat remains — it’s the kind of habitat that’s disappearing. Turkeys depend on open, plant-diverse landscapes for nesting and raising young, and that type of cover has become increasingly scarce. 

“The common denominator … is that we are very limited on high-quality nesting and brooding cover,” Lashley says.

Two Weeks

The first two weeks of the poults’ lives are the most vulnerable, as they rely on a delicate balance of vegetation that is dense enough to hide them from predators on the ground and in the air, but open enough for a hen to see approaching danger. It must also support the insects they need to grow. As forests mature, fire declines and diverse landscapes are replaced by monocultures, and that balance begins to break down. Vegetation may be too sparse to provide cover or too thick to allow visibility, while tangled ground conditions can slow young birds or trap them entirely.

The result is that in the wild, only about two out of 10 poults survive to two weeks, when they should be strong enough to get off the ground into low-hanging branches, Lashley says.

“If habitat quality is poor and we have fewer nests that hatch, and fewer poults that survive, then the whole population declines,” he says.

Wild turkeys are a crucial part of Florida’s ecosystem. They act as both predators and prey, helping control insects and small pests while serving as a food source for animals such as foxes, hawks and eagles — as well as humans.

But the stakes extend beyond ecology.

The elusive Osceola turkey, found only in Central and South Florida, plays an outsized role in both hunting culture and Florida’s outdoor economy because it is one of the four subspecies required to complete the coveted “Grand Slam,” a lifelong goal for many dedicated turkey hunters, according to the turkey federation. Each spring, Osceola turkeys draw some 25,000 hunters to Florida from across the country eager to pursue the rare bird as part of that achievement, making it a key driver of hunting-related travel and spending in the state. Those hunters spend about $30 million annually on guides, accommodations, food and gear.

Ricky Lackey, a district biologist for the National Wild Turkey Federation, says turkey hunting helps fund conservation and preservation of the wild birds, as well as many other species of animals in Florida.

“Turkey hunting popularity in Florida generates significant funding through license sales,” he says. “The specific permit that is required in Florida to hunt wild turkeys is used to fund things such as habitat enhancement on public lands, as well as continued wild turkey research. This all leads to a healthy and sustainable turkey population.”

Building Better Habitat

At a research site east of Gainesville, UF scientists are trying to answer one of the most pressing questions about turkey ecology: What exactly do young turkeys need to survive?

They have created carefully controlled experimental plots that vary in the species present, the relative abundance of different vegetation and their structure, such as vegetation height and density. These vegetation mixtures test which aspects of plant composition and structure influence poult success.

“Each plot is 2,000 square feet and contains a unique vegetation treatment,” O’Neil says. “Each treatment has a different combination of native and non-native forb and grass species so that we can work out how plant composition and structure affect poult foraging success. We selected these species to simulate different variations of early succession communities that poults in the wild forage in.”

Lashley, O’Neil and their students collect eggs from nests that have been abandoned or the hens have died and raise them in the lab. When the eggs hatch, a researcher is there, so the poults imprint and follow them as they would a mother hen.

In the weeks that follow, researchers effectively become that hen.

“For about two weeks, six people have to be here from daylight to dark being turkey mama,” Lashley says. “They’re spending all day watching these birds and writing down everything they do. Every time they do something for the first time, every physiological measurement — everything gets recorded.”

The faster the poults grow and the sooner they can fly, the more likely they are to survive, Lashley says. To measure progress, researchers have built simple structures in the enclosures — perches and barriers that allow them to track when poults gain the strength to jump, climb or fly short distances.

“They need to get elevated to roost as quickly as possible,” Lashley says.“Getting even a couple of feet off the ground dramatically affects survival.”

The research is designed to isolate one of the most difficult variables in wildlife biology: habitat itself.

In the wild, poults must navigate both food availability and predation simultaneously, making it nearly impossible to determine cause and effect. In this controlled setting there are no predators, so the researchers can focus on how vegetation and insect communities alone influence survival.

“We’re isolating the effects of vegetation structure and food availability from predation,” Lashley says. “It’s not that we’re ignoring predation — we’re going to do that in other experiments — but right now we’re asking what role vegetation is playing.”

As the birds mature, researchers continue to follow them. At about a year, they’re ready to mate, and Lashley’s research team is ready to track them as they go about this vulnerable time.  

In one study, Game Lab researchers tag wild hens in the winter before they begin to nest, putting a little backpack-like GPS transmitter on the turkey. The GPS helps researchers track those turkeys as they mate and nest and determine how long they survive afterward.  

Over the past two years, they’ve tagged about 150 turkeys. Over the past five years, they’ve tagged about 300 Osceola turkeys specifically.  

In another study, researchers went to the UF/IFAS DeLuca Preserve in Okeechobee and tracked the vital signs of Osceola turkeys as they bred, and then tracked the survival of their poults to see how that specific ecosystem was faring.  

The next study on Lashley’s docket is to introduce a population of wild turkeys to a 10,000-acre site in Osceola County to test some of the vegetation and management ideas developed during other studies.  

“We’re going to take what we find here and measure it in the field — see if it translates into real turkey populations,” Lashley says. 

The research may also reveal longer-term effects — including whether early habitat conditions shape a turkey’s behavior, diet or reproductive success later in life.

Umbrella Species

Lackey said Lashley’s team’s research will be invaluable for making sure investments in turkey populations are going to the right locations and to address the biggest needs.

“The research that is being conducted through UF will definitely continue to inform the management of the bird. Utilizing science to inform management will ensure that we have sustainable and healthy populations of wild turkeys,” Lackey said.

Lashley says one of the things that has surprised him about this project is how quickly the researchers and students in the lab have embraced turkey conservation.

“No one in my lab was a turkey person before, and they have all gotten sucked in,” he says. “We’re all going to be speaking turkey by the end of this.”

Beyond the lab, wildlife managers, conservationists and landowners regularly send questions, photos and observations from across the country — all searching for answers.

“It’s been really eye-opening that people would care that much about something we’re so passionate about,” Lashley says.

And the implications go far beyond turkeys alone.

“Turkeys are a great umbrella species,” he says. “When we have healthy turkeys, it benefits a lot of other important species. If turkeys thrive, Florida’s environment thrives.”

Sources

Kelly O’Neil, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
luckyirishk@ufl.edu