A friend and I are looking into a potential study on the effects of the presence of a larval mimic on the model organism, a coral snake. This study will most likely be conducted in a tropical rainforest-type area.
We specifically want to be able to quantify a snake's predatory success rates in communities both with and without the mimic.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
You can look at this article and find out how did they perform the research. This might be of great help.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092233
You can look at this article and find out how did they perform the research. This might be of great help.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092233
You can look at this article and find out how did they perform the research. This might be of great help.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092233
Hi Giancarlo,
We work with high school students in the field, and I have worked with park rangers. Predatory behavior in snakes in the wild is difficult to catch, and if not staged, I can imagine it would mean many, many hours of observations in the field. But oh, how rewarding it is when it does happen in the wild! One park ranger told us of an incident when he saw a snake eating a squirrel in the wild, and he thought it was the most amazing thing he ever saw in all his years in the field, and he spends many hours a day outdoors. He spent hours of the day observing the event--so catching a true 'wild' moment I would guess would not be easy at all without bait. But, oh, how rewarding. If I could I would just 'do a Jane Goodall' and stake the place out for a long, long time. Good luck!
Hi, if you're working in an 'arena', than a motion sensitive camera ("scout cameras"), can be effective, since they only film relevant footage and you are not present to disturb (or get bored).
Yoav
For his work on snake predation in the field, Professor Rulon Clark uses remote time-lapse cameras (Timelapse PlantCam and TimelapseCam 8.0, Wingscapes, Inc., Alabaster, Alabama, USA), which are able to record semi-continuous behavioral observations.
Clark RW. 2004b. Timber rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) use chemical cues to select ambush sites. J Chem Ecol. 30:607–617.
Clark RW. 2006. Fixed videography to study predation behavior of an ambush foraging snake, Crotalus horridus. Copeia. 2006:181–187.
He has a review chapter on this topic in an upcoming book, The Rattlesnakes of Arizona, due out in late 2015.
Thanks for all of your input!
I'll be sure to look into these to see what works best.
I would strongly recommend a "quasi-wild" environment. Make an exclusion where you can know for sure you have the snakes, and yea, try to give them prey so you can record it or at least observe it. In the wild as they have already told you is really rewarding but it is also really difficult, especially with shy snakes such as corals. You can learn a lot from predation keeping snakes in captivity, and I guess you can watch them hunt as in the wild if your "terrarium" or exclusion is big enough and natural enough. I would suggest an enclosure (by fence) like an arena with natural vegetation and that you release the snake...(maybe after keeping it a little) and watch her do her thing... Good luck with that!
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