PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Habitat is fundamental for facilitating various life activities in animals, for instance, snakes procure essential energy for survival and reproduction by selecting ambush microhabitats. While there has been extensive research on the selection of microhabitat for feeding in terrestrial and aquatic snakes, little is known about arboreal snakes. In the present study, we analyzed the ambush microhabitat preferences of Viridovipera stejnegeri, a widely distributed Asian pitviper in China, conducted association analysis between snake microhabitat and prey microhabitat and abundance to determine the ro5le of microhabitat selection in feeding. Employing random forest analysis and habitat selection functions, we further constructed a predictive framework for assessing the probability of ambush site selection by V. stejnegeri. Our results revealed that V. stejnegeri exhibited a distinct microhabitat preference for ambush prey. Among the 13 environmental factors assessed, V. stejnegeri showed pronounced preferences towards 12 of these factors, including climatic factors, geographical factors, and vegetation factors. Furthermore, although the preferences of V. stejnegeri overlapped substantially with those of its prey across multiple habitat factors, food abundance shows no significant association with various habitat factors of V. stejnegeri, and does not have significant predictive effect on habitat selection of V. stejnegeri. Therefore, we infer that V. stejnegeri does not preferentially select microhabitats with the highest food abundance, which does not support the hypothesis that \"snakes select habitats based on the spatial distribution of prey abundance.\" By analyzing the characteristics of vegetation, geography, and climate, we conclude that V. stejnegeri tends to choose microhabitats with better ambush conditions to increase attack success rate, thereby achieving the optimal feeding success rate at the microhabitat scale, which is in line with the predictions of optimal foraging theory. This study provides new insights into the predation ecology and habitat selection of snakes.
摘要：
栖息地是促进动物各种生命活动的基础，例如,蛇通过选择埋伏微生境来获取生存和繁殖所必需的能量。虽然在选择陆地和水生蛇的微生境方面进行了广泛的研究，人们对树栖蛇知之甚少。在本研究中,我们分析了Viridoviperastejnegeri的伏击微生境偏好，在中国广泛分布的亚洲pitvier，进行了蛇微生境与猎物微生境和丰度之间的关联分析，以确定取食中微生境选择的role。采用随机森林分析和栖息地选择函数，我们进一步构建了一个预测框架，用于评估V.stejnegeri伏击位点选择的概率。我们的结果表明，V.stejnegeri表现出对伏击猎物的独特微生境偏好。在评估的13个环境因素中，V.Stejnegeri对其中的12个因素表现出明显的偏好，包括气候因素,地理因素,和植被因素。此外，尽管在多个栖息地因素中，V.stejnegeri的偏好与其猎物的偏好基本重叠，食物丰度与Stejnegeri的各种栖息地因子没有显着关联，并且对V.stejnegeri的栖息地选择没有显着的预测作用。因此,我们推断，Stejnegeri不优先选择食物丰度最高的微生境，这不支持“蛇根据猎物丰度的空间分布选择栖息地”的假设。“通过分析植被的特点，地理,和气候,我们得出的结论是，V.stejnegeri倾向于选择具有更好的伏击条件的微生境来提高攻击成功率，从而在微生境尺度上达到最佳的喂食成功率，这符合最优觅食理论的预测。这项研究为蛇的捕食生态和栖息地选择提供了新的见解。
