Are snake populations in widespread decline?

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Long-term studies have revealed population declines in fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. In birds, and particularly amphibians, these declines are a global phenomenon whose causes are often unclear. Among reptiles, snakes are top predators and therefore a decline in their numbers may have serious consequences for the functioning of many ecosystems. Our results show that, of 17 snake populations (eight species) from the UK, France, Italy, Nigeria and Australia, 11 have declined sharply over the same relatively short period of time with five remaining stable and one showing signs of a marginal increase. Although the causes of these declines are currently unknown, we suspect that they are multi-faceted (such as habitat quality deterioration, prey availability), and with a common cause, e.g. global climate change, at their root.

Related collections

Most cited references 17

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

The Global Decline of Reptiles, Déjà Vu Amphibians

J. WHITFIELD GIBBON, David Scott, TRAVIS RYAN … (2000)

0 comments Cited 334 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Ecological thresholds and regime shifts: approaches to identification.

Tom Andersen, Jacob Carstensen, Emilio Hernández-García … (2009)

There is an apparent gap between the prominence of present theoretical frameworks involving ecological thresholds and regime shifts, and the paucity of efforts to conduct simple tests and quantitative inferences on the actual appearance of such phenomena in ecological data. A wide range of statistical methods and analytical techniques are now available that render these questions tractable, some of them even dating back half a century. Yet, their application has been sparse and confined within a narrow subset of cases of ecological regime shifts. Our objective is to raise awareness on the range of techniques available, and to their principles and limitations, to promote a more operational approach to the identification of ecological thresholds and regime shifts.