A great question and one that needs to be evaluated carefully.



As for kingsnakes, I have no study data.



In most crotalids, it appears babies seem to be the the ones moving among the small groups that appear to be all living together, or side by side, or however one wants to try to label them. For now, I will call them family groups. This has been seen in several studies using several mark recapture methods. Some stay in the immediate area they were born in, and some move off to other spots.



In the project that FR speaks of, we have hardly marked any newborns (less than 2 weeks). One it is tough to do, two, we avoid harassing any snakes in our study area during birthing time (we did enough of that in the 70's). I think we have tagged two? I am too lazy to go into the data right now and see what happened to them. It appears no one else is moving around between the groups within our study area.



We are planning to zero in on this very factor beginning, hopefully, in 2006.



So here you go folks, jump on this:



My guess, babies do a little bit of each. There will be no set thing they do. Some stay put, some move off, lots don't get past square one.



Happy Thanksgiving.

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