Is Righting Response Repeatable Across Years in the Painted Turtle ( Chrysemys picta )?

The ability to right when flipped upside‐down can be exceptionally important to animals with rigid exoskeletons or shells, such as hatchling turtles who have to traverse land after emerging from the natal nest. However, righting has been less frequently tested in adult turtles. This is especially surprising because it may be a useful trait for evaluating aspects of fitness like survival, since adult turtles also come onto land when gravid to dig and lay nests or to find new bodies of water. We used data collected from a long‐term study of painted turtles, Chrysemys picta , to test the repeatability of righting response within an individual across years and then tested whether righting differs between juveniles and adults, gravid and nongravid females, or males and females. We found that righting response (measured as either the time to right or as righting success) had poor repeatability within individual turtles. Size was a significant predictor of righting time, with smaller turtles righting faster. Gravid females were not significantly more likely to right themselves and did not right faster than nongravid females. There were also no differences between male and female righting responses. These results suggest that righting is primarily constrained by body size in painted turtles and so is not repeatable within individuals and should not be used as a proxy for fitness.