As you may know, I watched breeding colonies of many kinds of reptiles. Breeding colonies are groups of many pairs, within a very small area. A concentration of reproductive adults.
What I have seen is, these colonies limited limited lifespan.
I have watched Lyresnakes, and pyros locally, also diamondbacks and gilas. All these are longterm with the recognizable individuals.
The colubrids averaged about 8yrs, then disappeared. There would not no recruitment to that congregating and nesting area. With the diamondbacks, they often lasted a dozen years. Again with little recruitment to the same area.
Gilas, are a horse of a different color, they do recruit and their colonies have lasted 30 years and counting. With only one complete change of breeding adults in that lenght of time.
I have also worked both Banded rocks and Willardi for 18 years on the same colonies. With these, we pit tag them, so we are constantly chasing(causing them to move) So its very hard to tell how long they last, but we had breeding individuals over 10 years in the system. The problem is, catching and processing them often chases them from one area to another. If we are diligent and catch them say once a week, they are GONE(gone means, gone, never to be seen again) Add to that, 65% aprox, are GONE after the first encounter.
But to show how stable the population is, It has maintained aprox 50% tagged animals, even after a few years of only tagging two or three times a year. That is, we still find about half on any given day, have already been tagged.
I also watched colonies of Pricei and banded rocks and willards that were not touched EVER. They did maintain a very tight range and indeed returned to the exact inch, year after year to reproduce. These colonies, last aprox 10 t 12 years, then were GONE.
In fact, one area, had banded rocks for 10 years, then willards for ten years, then pricei for ten years. Other areas have two of these or all three of these in one area.
In fact, once(only once) I found four gravid willards three gravid Pricei and one gravid rock rattlesnake, coiled within inches of eachother(hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm must be a reason). I was lucky I guess.
So yes, I argee, at least in some areas, they have a limited lifespan.
In my naive way, I use to call them Slow antelope, that is, those colonies, move around like a herd of anlope, ONLY really really really slow.
And yes, I still have many many many unanswered questions on the how and why. But I have at least seen this much.
And yes, I have found HUGE colonies of Thayeri, as well as other species in that area.
I was walking around there(NL) and I happened upon a whole bunch of coachwhip sheds, all over this little knoll. Maybe forty to fifty sheds, all over, overlapping eachother etc. As I was standing there, I thought to myself. Dude, if a thayeri was here, it would be soooooooooo gone. And as I thought that, I noticed a thayeri coiled up, at the very end of a coachwhip shed. hahahahahahahahahahaha what do I know? I am just a human.
By the way, once my friend and collecting partner Ted, found an area where thayeri had gathered. We decided to count sheds. We found aprox. 200 fresh sheds in one small area. Some were in pieces, so the number could be less, say 150 aprox. So if we are stupid as a stone and cannot count(possible when your all excited) there realistically was over 100 individuals in one area.
I mention the doubt because we were often interrupted by unusually marked sheds. Like some that were striped, like a wide stripe down the top, 1, 2, 3, Was that red or white or tan? 45, 46, or green, 56, 57, 58, dude, its irradesing, 67, 68, hahahahahahahahaha.
By the way, I am not a good snake hunter, as I have no gift to see snakes. Those that know me, call me a hound dog, I sniff out where they live, once you find where they live, the snakes are NOT hard to find(with the exception of tooo hot and or tooo dry). You do not need to be good at seeing snakes. What I look for, is sheds, hatched eggs, etc, these have a fairly long, but not too long lifespan. Once you find that, the rest is EASY and about timing. And no, you do not have to dig to find these things, you just have to look.
Thanks for letting me tell more boring stories. Cheers
