Vehicle Incidents? Reeves’ Turtles, Mauremys reevesii (Gray, 1831), found in the Republic of Korea with cracked carapaces

Infrastructure development and road construction have led to widespread habitat fragmentation globally. Especially, wild animals which are long-distance travellers are exposed to the danger of being killed while crossing roads (Trombulak and Frissell, 2000; Coffin, 2007). As a result, traffic has become one of the leading causes of death in many vertebrates worldwide (Hill et al., 2019). Moreover, this trend is expected to expand because worldwide road construction is expected to increase by about 60% by 2050 compared to 2010 (Laurance et al., 2014) and the numbers of animals in local populations are therefore expected to decrease (Forman and Alexander, 1998; Steen and Gibbs, 2004). As the Republic of Korea develops roads, almost doubling their total length since 1980 (Chu et al., 2019), some research of road mortality on highways and in national parks has shown that mammals, amphibians, and reptiles are being impacted (Choi and Park, 2006; Song et al., 2009; Min and Han, 2010). Nearly one-fourth of the killed animals on roads in Korea are amphibians and reptiles, including Rana uenoi (Matsui, 2014) and Rhabdophis tigrinus (Boie, 1826) (Song et al., 2009; Park et al., 2017). Freshwater turtles move between habitats, such as between breeding or hibernation sites, to look for food, to mate, and to lay eggs. They are therefore in danger of being run over when habitats are fragmented by roads near wildlife habitats. Gibbs and Shriver (2002) predicted road mortality of more than 5% of tortoises and large-bodied turtles in many regions of the United States in relation to road networks. Road mortality was also the most common cause of death reported for turtles along the Murray River in southeastern Australia (Santori et al., 2018).