Officially, that is, with snakes that were marked(tagged) they do not go anywhere. That is, they have not traveled over a few hundred feet. Maybe HKM can give exact distance, as he has the record books.



On my other sites(photo id or memory id) They have also not traveled any distance either. They stay close to where they are found. Remember, these are with neonates that are identified. Either exactly(tagged or photoed) or close(memory, of couse, this is not official). An example of memory, I found a neonate lyresnake, it had a kinked tail. I found that individual over an entire year, and watched it grow from a hatchling to a young adult. It never moved over five feet. But then it disappeared????????



I do understand, why you would question this, as we see lots of neonates moving here and there, around our houses(in the desert) or crossing streets or on the way to and back from our sites. These animals are seen once and done. It would appear they are dispersing, as they move in waves. But again, maybe they are only crossing the street and not moving very far.



On our sites most individuals are one and done. With a few found over and over. Yes we have tagged individuals and had them grow up on our sites. But in the first few years we did not tag all individual neonates. We both felt it was harmful. Consider, neonates only have a very small chance of surviving, then to tag them must surely decrease what chance they have left. In fact, tagging them seems to have a deleterious effect on adults. As most of the adults we tag disappear imediately. Again, HKM can give a more accurate percentage. But it seems about 65% of the individuals we tag disappear. The other 35% we recapture, time and time again. For instance, if we have tagged 200(close to accurate) we are only recapturing 70 and most of those are repeatedly recaptured. On an average day, if we are visting the site regularly, 50 to 70% are recaptures. After missing a year, we found 33% to be recaptured.



Now consider, we have five small hillsides and assoiated canyon bottoms. These hillsides are very close to eachother, within 100 yards apart, as close as 50 yds. We have never seen any individual move from one local to the other. Also, we have never seen them in the areas between the sites(I call these areas, dead zones). This is over 15yrs.



Our original site was three canyons, we added two more about 8 yrs ago, just to see if individuals were leaving.



So your answer is, we have not seen any age group travel any distance, not on our sites or otherwise. But then so far, we are lucky, none of our sites have had deleterious changes, like fire or floods or landslides, etc. FR

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