Ecologist Finds Dire Devastation Of Snake Species Following Floods

Science Daily — In science, it's best to be good, but sometimes it's better to be lucky.

Ecologist Owen Sexton, professor emeritus of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, had just completed a census of snakes at a conservation preserve northwest of St. Louis, when the great flood of 1993 deluged the area, putting the preserve at least 15 feet under water.

The flood provided Sexton with a rare opportunity: His collected data and the flood would combine to make "the perfect study" of how an area rebounds from natural disaster.

He went back the following year and found that the flood had displaced or killed 70 percent of the pre-flood population of five snake species, and either eliminated the populations of three other species found there, or left the populations so low that they could not be detected.

Key to survival? Size. It matters to a snake when floodwaters roar through the environment. The bigger the snake, the better chance for survival, Sexton found, and arboreal species — those that hang out in trees — fared better than (surprise) aquatic ones.

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