Endangered
Chinese pond turtle
Mauremys reevesii
Chinese pond turtle is a turtle in the family Geoemydidae — Mauremys reevesii, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
While the species typically appears to have a brown shell, dark grey skin, with yellow markings on the neck and yellow irises, melanism is well documented in males, where the entirety of the animal among them the eyes becomes completely black and the yellow markings are lost. Old females may sometimes also develop darker shells and fewer markings. Alongside the Chinese softshell turtle, it is one of the two most commonly found species used for divination that have been recovered from Shang dynasty sites.
Range and habitat
Chinese pond turtle is native to China and Korea, and is thought to have been introduced to Japan and Taiwan in historic times. It was previously thought to be native to both these regions. Introduced populations of M. Reevesii may serve as a threat to the native turtles of these regions due to its propensity for hybridization. M. Reevesii is semiaquatic, and basks in the sun on rocks or logs and can often be found leaving water to do so.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
The Chinese three-keeled pond turtle (M. Reevesii) is threatened by competition with released pet red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans), overhunting (its plastron is used in traditional Chinese medicine), capturing for the pet trade, and wild habitat destruction. The IUCN considers M. Reevesii an endangered species.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix III. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Chinese pond turtle is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Chinese pond turtle, Wikidata item Q495153. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
