On a brilliant, sunny Wednesday morning, San Diego State University (SDSU) graduate researcher Emma McAndrews, with a snake grabber in hand, was on a mission.
She’s in search of a red-diamond rattlesnake that she’s been monitoring for almost a yr.
Now that the climate is hotter, snakes have gotten lively, trying to find mates. The red-diamond rattlesnakes that McAndrews is finding out like to cover in rocks and tall grassy areas.
“These snakes are actually behaviorally cryptic, which suggests they spend most of their time hid,” she mentioned.
It’s both to evade predators or ambush prey, and that makes that tough to watch and examine within the area.
Plus, direct statement interferes with their pure habits.
The analysis undertaking is a partnership between SDSU and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. They are among the many first to make use of biologging expertise to review snakes.
The biodiversity reserve on the San Diego Zoo Safari Park is a hotspot for the red-diamond rattlesnakes.
After a little bit of trying, following the ping of the radio tag on the snake, recognized as M-43, the snake was noticed in a rock crevice.
Now comes the information assortment. McAndrews made a observe of the place the snake was discovered.
“Rocks to the, I suppose, southeast of the cell den,” she dictated to the voice observe recorder on her mobile phone.
A cell den is the place snakes overwinter. McAndrews additionally information what crops have been discovered across the snake.
“There is a laurel sumac — that’s Malosma (laurina),” she mentioned, clarifying the scientific identify for the plant.
All these knowledge factors are vital for researchers to review what sort of microhabitat these snakes want. And that may assist researchers create microbiomes sooner or later to protect the species.
The red-diamond rattlesnakes are listed as close to threatened as a result of they like pristine coastal sage scrub habitat. And that’s onerous to search out.
More than 75% of the coastal sage scrub habitat is gone due to human improvement.
“We’d take a hit if we lost the red diamonds, for sure. But, yeah, we’d be losing that ecosystem function,” McAndrews said. “We could potentially see, especially in our areas of coastal sage scrub habitat, rodent populations going up, which would have potentially a negative effect on the longevity of the vegetation in the area.”
The Safari Park Biodiversity Reserve is among the few pristine sage scrub habitats left within the county, mentioned Jeff Lemm, a conservation program specialist on the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
He was additionally on the market with McAndrews monitoring the red-diamond rattlesnakes. He’s been finding out them for greater than 20 years. They are the largest native rattlesnake species in San Diego.
“They are very important in the food web in general,” he said. “So they eat a lot of the smaller animals and a lot of larger animals, such as bobcats, coyotes, hawks, birds of prey, eat them.”
That’s why analysis like that is so vital. But finding out them has been difficult due to how elusive these snakes are — till now.
They are tagging these rattlesnakes with radio transmitters and accelerometers, just like the expertise in cell telephones. The accelerometer measures motion, together with pace, distance and top. The machine gathers 75 knowledge factors each second.
“So they’re able to monitor accelerations of the snake’s movements along three bodily axes,” McAndrews said. “So if the snake’s moving forward or back, side to side, or any vertical motions as well.”
Researchers use these knowledge, together with video proof and machine studying, to recreate the habits profile of those snakes when they aren’t being monitored.
Accelerometers have been used to trace animals within the wild earlier than, however they are typically greater and bulkier — not preferrred for snakes.
But, with improved expertise, they’re smaller and simpler to connect to snakes. The Zoo Wildlife Alliance and SDSU are among the many first to make use of them to review snakes.
“The accelerometers are letting us know what they’re doing when we’re not there. Over time, we hope to use that technology to tell us how they’re reacting to things like roads.” Lemm said. “Roads are one of the biggest problems. They cut the habitats in half, they kill snakes.”
While it’s nonetheless too early to kind any conclusions, McAndrews mentioned anecdotally she’s seen that red-diamonds have a tendency to not cross large roads. But the snakes have additionally discovered inventive methods to cross.
“Female, 22, she crossed Highway 78 down there (next to the reserve), but she didn’t go over the top of the highway,” McAndrews said. “She used a water-diverting culvert to cross the road and get to the other side.”
Previous research have proven genetic variations between snake populations separated by a freeway. This is vital as a result of being remoted might have an effect on a inhabitants’s biodiversity, resulting in extinction.
“If you think of every species in the world as a brick and a wall, and every time one goes extinct, you’re pulling a brick out of the wall,” Lemm said. “(Overtime) the wall is not going to make it. It’s going to crash, and that wall is us.”
The purple diamond rattlesnakes have a small vary in Southern California. They’re solely present in just a few counties and their habitat is disappearing because the human inhabitants grows, Lemm mentioned.
