Spatiotemporal Patterns of Snake Captures and Activity in Upland Pine Forests

Schalk, Christopher M.; Weng, Yuhui; Adams, Connor S.; Saenz, Daniel

doi:10.1674/0003-0031-187.2.195

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Precipitation as a primary predictor is consistent with many other studies of snakes, particularly from arid regions or where rainfall is seasonal [23][24][25]. Also consistent with previous work, snake activity was positively associated with ambient temperatures [11,12,26], and peaked at about 28 • C, above which there was a decline in predicted activity. Our finding that moon phase had small effect size was also expected in context of previous studies, as moon illumination has been shown to have modest and variable effects on snake activity and is confounded by various factors, including lunar precession and cloud cover [11,27,28].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…In some instances, two or more transects were surveyed on the same night but always following our randomized order. We selected the following series of environmental covariates that have been associated with snake activity or purported to be associated with snake activity [10][11][12]: date (i.e., seasonal influence), ambient temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, wind speed, and lunar phase. We collected environmental data upon initiating and terminating surveys regardless of whether snakes were encountered, and we used the average value of these variables for analyses.…”

Section: Study Area and Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Factors Influencing Activity and Detection of Species in a Cross Timbers Snake Assemblage

King,

Meik

2023

Diversity

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The Cross Timbers of North America is an ecotone between the eastern deciduous forests and central grasslands and exhibits a diverse composite snake fauna. Over a 3-yr period, we performed repeated nocturnal road surveys of snakes across three transects in Wise County, Texas, and evaluated species composition, relative abundances, vehicular mortality, detection probability, and the influence of environmental variables on snake activity. Sixteen taxa and 406 observations were recorded over 250 surveys, and the three most frequently encountered species had detection probabilities of approximately 0.20: Pantherophis obsoletus, Agkistrodon laticinctus, and Nerodia rhombifer. Only the two species of Agkistrodon present at our study area showed significant differences in count frequencies across the three transects. Covariate effects on overall snake activity were subtle, with barometric pressure, ordinal date, and ambient temperature better explaining variation in combined snake counts than humidity, wind speed, or lunar phase. Furthermore, peak snake activity corresponded closely to the timing of peak warm-season precipitation in the study area, suggesting that snake activity coincides with rainfall periodicity in the Cross Timbers region. However, results of site-occupancy models indicated that covariate effects were different across species, and that several common species did not show clear responses to any of the survey covariates.

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