(Posted March 6, 2017)

Roy Nagle shares some facts about turtles with environmental science students at the Raystown Field Station
Roy Nagle shares some facts about turtles with environmental science students at the Raystown Field Station

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Roy Nagle, director of environmental health and safety at Juniata College and an environmental scientist specializing in herpetology, will give a talk on the long lives of turtles at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 14, in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science.

            The talk is free and open to the public. Nagle’s lecture is part of the Bookend Seminar Series, a series of monthly lectures by Juniata faculty during the academic year.

            The talk, “Conservation and Ecology of Long-lived Turtles: Lessons from a 33-Year Field Study,” will center on Nagle’s work at the E.S. George Reserve, a Michigan nature reserve owned by the University of Michigan. Nagle was one of several scientists who participated in one of the longest continuous studies of freshwater turtles. From 1975 to 2007, researchers collected and identified more than 6,000 painted turtles, 2,000 Blanding’s turtles and 3,000 snapping turtles.

            He will describe how each turtle was given unique identification marks to track such information as aging, demographics, growth, reproduction and spatial ecology. Data from the project were used to conceptualize patterns of life history evolution, test theories of aging and develop conservation and management plans.

Nagle came to Juniata in 1998 from the University of Georgia, where he served as Research Coordinator for the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory’s physiological ecology and wildlife toxicology program. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Penn State University and a master’s degree from the University of South Carolina.

Nagle has been Juniata's director of environmental health and safety and an instructor of environmental science since 2006. He serves as chairperson of the campus safety committee and the institutional animal care and use committee.

He also is an academic advisor for students in environmental science, environmental studies, and wildlife conservation. His research spans a range of environmental, evolutionary, and physiological ecology. Other research has included non-lethal methods of determining animal body composition, parental investment in amphibians and reptiles, and winter survivorship of hatchling turtles. He also has worked on studies examining the effects of nuclear production and coal combustion facilities on the environment. His research articles have been published in a wide variety of scholarly journals, including Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Experimental Gerontology and the Canadian Journal of Zoology.

Nagle serves on the Huntingdon County Emergency Planning Committee and was awarded the Pennsylvania Quality Initiative Environmental Award in 2001 for his work to conserve a local population of map turtles.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.