My name is Steven Pearson. I have just started the PhD program at Drexel University with a concentration in Ecology. My interest in ecology stems from a childhood of adventures in the great outdoors. Growing up in the Delaware watershed I had plenty of experiences playing in the forests of southeastern Pennsylvania. As a child I would always look at birds, insects, fish and any other critter I could catch or see while spending the summer and weekends in the woods. In high school I continued to study the sciences which led me into the field of environmental science while in College. In 2003 I graduated from the Richard Stockton College of N.J. with a B.S. in environmental Sciences. In the following 2 years I traveled around central and north America working with many different types of organisms; from plants to raptors to foxes and finally in 2006 I began to work with turtles in the Delaware watershed.

In the spring of 2006 I began to study the local turtles that can be found in the Delaware River watershed in Bristol Pa. at the Silver Lake Nature Center. At this time I was looking at the ecology of a Pa threatened species, the Red-bellied turtle. In this study I also managed to learn quite a bit about the other species of turtle that can be found in the watershed. These turtle species include both native and non-native turtles. The native turtles that I have worked with are eastern painted turtles, stinkpot turtles and common American snapping turtle. The most common non-native turtle found within the Delaware River watershed is the Red-eared slider turtle. This species has been introduced worldwide and is known to compete with native turtles for resources.

In the summer of 2007 I began working with Drexel University to increase our knowledge of how the Red-eared Slider is effecting the populations of Red-bellied turtles. To do this we have been trapping turtles in the Delaware River watershed. In addition to trapping turtles and gaining information on the local population sizes we plan on using radio telemetry to determine the home range, movements, preferred habitat use and nesting sites used by Red-eared slider turtles and red-bellied turtles. In addition collecting data on the spatial needs of these two species we will also be working to understand the level of competition exhibited between these two species in terms of their diet. We hope that, through these methods, we will gain a deeper understanding of the level of competition that this non-native species has with a native threatened species.