| Abstract: We monitored the temperature of seven Paleosuchus palpebrosus nests found on the banks of streams surrounding the Brazilian Pantanal, near the southern limit of the species' distribution, between 2008 and 2013. The mean temperature of the nests between 45 and 68 days incubation, the presumed period of sex determination, varied between 26.1 and 31.5o C. Nest temperatures were 2 to 5°C higher than air temperatures, presumably due to metabolic heat of decay of material within the nests, but air temperature explained 10?50% of the variance in egg-chamber temperatures. The estimated incubation periods for nests from which eggs hatched were 80, 84, 86, 90 and 104 days with a mean of 89 (SD =9.23) days, though these are probably slight overestimates... |
