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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Managed Areas As Ecological Traps For Snakes In An Exotic Plant-Invaded Landscape, Evin Carter, Bruce Kingsbury
Managed Areas As Ecological Traps For Snakes In An Exotic Plant-Invaded Landscape, Evin Carter, Bruce Kingsbury
Bruce A Kingsbury Ph.D.
Areas such as wildlife refuges or parks offer important opportunities for the protection of imperiled wildlife. Unfortunately, conflicting practices and objectives with respect to natural resource management and general property management can potentially lead to negative outcomes such as the decline or extirpation local flora or fauna. Here, we provide direct evidence of the impacts of property management and restoration activities on a population of Northern Copperheads ( Agkistrodon contortrix mokasen ) in southern Indiana, showing that several managed habitats can and do attract Northern Copperheads and simultaneously place them at greater risk of injury and/or mortality. At the same …
Impacts Of Invasive Plants On Resource Selection And Thermoregulation By A North American Pitviper (Agkistrodon Contortrix Mokasen), Evin Carter, Bruce Kingsbury
Impacts Of Invasive Plants On Resource Selection And Thermoregulation By A North American Pitviper (Agkistrodon Contortrix Mokasen), Evin Carter, Bruce Kingsbury
Bruce A Kingsbury Ph.D.
Invasive plants have been identified as a potential factor in the decline of many forms of wildlife. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of clear evidence regarding causative mechanisms. We therefore investigated the effects of nonnative invasive plants on resource selection and thermoregulation by 22 radio-tagged Northern Copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix mokasen) in southern Indiana. Copperheads exhibited clear avoidance of most invasive plant species at multiple spatial scales, with exotic shrubs having the greatest influence on copperhead habitat selection. Avoidance appears to be at least partially attributable to limited thermoregulatory opportunities within exotic plant-dominated habitats relative to native habitats, with exotic shrub …
Effects Of Natural Flooding And Manual Trapping On The Facilitation Of Invasive Crayfish-Native Amphibian Coexistence In A Semi-Arid Perennial Stream, Lee Kats, Gary Bucciarelli, Thomas Vandergon, Rodney Honeycutt, Evan Mattiasen, Arthur Sanders, Seth Riley, Jacob Kerby, Robert Fisher
Effects Of Natural Flooding And Manual Trapping On The Facilitation Of Invasive Crayfish-Native Amphibian Coexistence In A Semi-Arid Perennial Stream, Lee Kats, Gary Bucciarelli, Thomas Vandergon, Rodney Honeycutt, Evan Mattiasen, Arthur Sanders, Seth Riley, Jacob Kerby, Robert Fisher
Lee Kats
Aquatic amphibians are known to be vulnerable to a myriad of invasive predators. Invasive crayfish are thought to have eliminated native populations of amphibians in some streams in the semi-arid Santa Monica Mountains of southern California. Despite their toxic skin secretions that defend them from native predators, newts are vulnerable to crayfish attacks, and crayfish have been observed attacking adult newts, and eating newt egg masses and larvae. For 15 years, we have observed invasive crayfish and native California newts coexisting in one stream in the Santa Monica Mountains. During that period, we monitored the densities of both crayfish and …