Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Biological Sciences
Committee Chair
Matthew Niemiller
Committee Member
Zachary Culumber
Committee Member
Skylar Hopkins
Subject(s)
Snakes--Conservation--Alabama, Snakes--Mortality--Alabama, Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge (Ala.)
Abstract
Snakes are important predators and prey in North American food webs that exhibit seasonal activity patterns in temperate regions. During periods of heightened activity, they will often utilize roads both for traveling from one habitat patch to another and/or for thermoregulation. In this thesis, I explore how human recreational activities impact the diversity and distribution of snake communities by examining the relationships between seasonality of human recreational activities and gravel road closures for waterfowl management on snake road mortality and activity at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alabama, USA. Many studies have investigated how snakes interact with paved roads, but there is little literature documenting how they may use gravel roads within a protected area, such as a wildlife refuge. We identified a total of 121 snakes (12 species) from our VES surveys and 91 snakes (9 species) from our road surveys. While we identified the most common species within the refuge, we likely underestimated overall species richness. We identified seasonal road trends in detectability across all snake species. While our occupancy values were high, our detection values ranged from 0.29—0.34 for all snakes. We had an abnormally low number of dead-on road snakes. While this could be due to the nature of the refuge, it could also be due to limitations of our study design. We recommend Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge employ brief seasonal road closures during periods of peak snake activity.
Recommended Citation
Schoettle, Jackson S., "Seasonal vulnerability of snakes to road traffic at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge" (2023). Theses. 609.
https://louis.uah.edu/uah-theses/609