Disappearing snakes and the biodiversity crisis

Date:  February 13, 2020

Source:  Michigan State University

A Michigan State University- and University of Maryland-led study should sound alarm bells regarding the "biodiversity crisis" or the loss of wildlife around the world.

The loss of any species is devastating. However, the decline or extinction of one species can trigger an avalanche within an ecosystem, wiping out many species in the process. When biodiversity losses cause cascading effects within a region, they can eliminate many data-deficient species -- animals that have eluded scientific study or haven't been researched enough to understand how best to conserve them.

"Some species that are rare or hard to detect may be declining so quickly that we might not ever know that we're losing them," said Elise Zipkin, MSU integrative biologist and the study's lead author. "In fact, this study is less about snakes and more about the general loss of biodiversity and its consequences."

The snakes in question reside in a protected area near El Copé, Panama. The new study documents how the snake community plummeted after an invasive fungal pathogen wiped out most of the area's frogs, a primary food source. Thanks to the University of Maryland's long-term study tracking amphibians and reptiles, the team had seven years of data on the snake community before the loss of frogs and six years of data afterwards.

Yet even with that extensive dataset, many species were detected so infrequently that traditional analysis methods were impossible. To say that these snakes are highly elusive or rare would be an understatement. Of the 36 snake species observed during the study, 12 were detected only once and five species were detected twice.

Continued