A few years ago I have seen the above mentioned plot (Snout Vent vs. Julian Date) in a Herpetology book, but I can't remember now which book it was, nor how was the plot called. The plot may be used to determine cohorts and to see patterns in growth at different ages.
I attach such a plot that we have produced, hoping that it will remind someone if they have seen or used such a plot in a publication.
Thanks,
Amos
Shallom Amos, Rick Shine used such plots in many of his papers on the natural history of various snakes (e.g. Shine 1978. Growth rates and sexual maturation in six species of Australian elapid snakes. Herpetologica 34:73-79). I've used this approach for data from museum specimens too. Usually the first cohort is clear enough, but the cohorts blur after that. If you have repeated measurements from marked individuals then a formal growth analysis might be more fruitful (eg. Johnston 2011 Growth and survivorship as proximate causes of sexual size dimorphism in peninsula dragon lizards Ctenophorus fionni. Austral Ecology 36:117-125). Hope all's well. Greg
Hi Greg, Many thanks. Indeed I found in Shine's article the exact type of plot I was referring to. Yes, we also have the problem that the growth rate varies among individuals, and the picture is only clear during the first few months. We do have recaptures, so we are now working on connecting some of the points of same individuals, which helps a bit to give us a feeling of the range of growth possible on this plot. We will also use growth curves, as done in your 2011 article.
Thanks a lot,
Amos
Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 in the following paper:
Cavin L. 1993. Structure d'une population subalpine de Lézards vivipares (Lacerta vivipara Jacquin, 1787). Revue Suisse de Zoologie 100: 22, 357-371
do include such plots.
Many thanks, Evgeny. Being an article in French, I would probably not be likely to find it in regular searches.
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