10.25338/B85G98
Todd, Brian
0000-0003-3133-791X
University of California, Davis
Nowakowski, Aaron
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
Data from: Ectothermy and the macroecology of home range scaling in snakes
Dryad
dataset
2020
home ranges
Snakes
Space use
radio-telemetry
minimum convex polygon
kernel density
2021-10-19T00:00:00Z
2020-12-01T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13225
165471 bytes
5
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Aim: A central question in ecology has been that of why animal home ranges
scale more steeply with body size than do metabolic rates. Yet, the
generality of this notion has scarcely been tested in non-model species
like ectotherms, which have lower metabolic requirements than endotherms
and which may therefore have different home range area requirements. Our
aim was to examine how home range area scales with body size in snakes and
to shed light on how other factors may shape home range area requirements
in an understudied group of ectotherms. Location: Global Time Period:
1984–2018 Major Taxon Studied: Serpents Methods: We compiled and analyzed
a dataset of snake home ranges from the literature to evaluate how body
size, sex, climate, foraging ecology, and biogeographic factors shape home
range area requirements. Results: Home range area scaled more gradually
with body size in snakes (log-linear slope of simple linear regression
0.72 with 95% Confidence Interval 0.48–0.96) than has been reported for
mammals and birds, and instead more closely following the scaling of
metabolic rates with body size. Male snakes had larger home ranges than
females and this difference increased as temperature increased at a study
site, possibly from mate-searching behavior of males and greater ease
reaching optimal body temperatures in warmer areas. Finally, home range
area scaled more steeply for snakes that forage actively than for those
that rely on sit-and-wait ambush foraging, a reflection of their foraging
ecology. Main Conclusion: Our results question the general notion that
animal home range areas scale more steeply with body size than does
metabolism. Key distinctions in the energy demands of endotherms and
ectotherms and their responses to those demands give rise to differing
home range area requirements. More attention to non-model species is
needed when creating and evaluating ecological theory.
Database of Snake Home Range Sizes Database of snake home ranges compiled
by the authors from the literature through 2018 in CSV format. The
database also includes body masses, home range estimates (by sex, where
available), the number of IUCN habitats recorded for each species, the
proportion of IUCN habitats that are aquatic, and the following
information for each study site: location coordinates, elevation, Net
Primary Productivity, total annual precipitation, and mean annual
temperature. The metadata describing the values and their units as well as
the full list of references for the database are provided in the
README.txt file. File Names:
'todd_and_nowakowski_snake_home_range_full_dataset.csv'
'README.txt' Subsets of Data and R Code for Re-creating the
Analyses and Results Three subsets of the main database were created in
CSV format for analysis depending on the response metric of interest as
described in the associated paper. The R code provided here references the
three CSV files as named and will recreate the results reported in the
associated manuscript published at Global Ecology and Biogeography. File
Names: 'Snake_HR_Ratios.csv' 'Snake_HR_woSex.csv'
'Snake_HR_wSex.csv' 'SnakeHR_LMM_PLMM.R'