Activity and home range of Testudo hermanni in Northern Italy Stefano Mazzotti 1 , Anna Pisapia 2 , Mauro Fasola 2 1 Museo di Storia Naturale, Via De Pisis 24, I-44100 Ferrara, Italy e-mail: conszool@comune.fe.it 2 Dipartimento Biologia Animale, Università, Piazza Botta 9, I-27100 Pavia, Italy Abstract. We describe the behavioral adaptations of a population of Hermann’s tortoise to the climate of a northern sector of its range, and to a wooded biotope that is uncommon for the species. The activity, the home range, and the thermal relations along the daily and the yearly cycle are described. In contrast to other populations that have bimodal activity peaking in spring and in autumn, the tortoises in our study area had unimodal seasonal activity that can be related to lower summer temperatures. Home range size, 7.4 ha for females and 4.6 ha for males in our study area, was from three to seven times larger than that of all other populations. The large home range, and the low population density of the tortoises in our study area, may be due to food scarcity in the wooded habitat. Introduction Reptiles are conditioned by environmental factors, especially temperature that inuences their metabolism and activity (Swingland and Fraizer, 1980; Meek and Jayes, 1982; Meek and Avery, 1988; Parmenter and Avery, 1990; Diaz-Paniagua et al., 1995), although most species may also control their body temperature through behavioral and physiological mechanisms (Huey, 1982; Sturbaum, 1982; Gavaud, 1987). Several studies have shown that thermal relations strongly inuence the behavior and ecology of Hermann’s tortoise Testudo hermanni (Hailey et al., 1984; Meek, 1984, 1988; Pulford et al., 1984; Chelazzi and Calzolai,1986;Panagiotaand Valakos,1992;Carretero et al., 1995;Huot-Daubremont et al., 1996; Huot-Daubremont and Grenot, 1997; Mazzotti and Vallini, 1999). Long-term research on the movement patterns and homing behaviour of Hermann’s tortoise (Chelazzi and Francisci, 1979) have shown that these tortoises stay within a stable home range, whose size varies seasonally (Calzolai and Chelazzi, 1991). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002 Amphibia-Reptilia 23: 305-312 Also available online - www.brill.nl