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Journal article

Mark-recapture Estimates of Survival in Populations of the Asp Viper, Vipera aspis aspis

    1997
Published in:
  • Journal of Herpetology. - 1997, vol. 31, no. 4, p. 558-564
asp viper
annual survivorship
probabilities
Switzerland
English We estimated th eannual survivorship of two populations of the asp viper, Vipera aspis aspis, by recapturing known dult individuals in the field over six and nine years respectively. The snakes at the two study sites in th eJura mountains of northwestern Switzerland were active between mid-March and mid-October. Vispera a. aspis is easily captured by hand, has individually recognizable marks and is, therefore, well suited for long-term mark-recapture studies. The maximum likelihood estimates of annual survivorship are about 0.75 in both populations. The probability that a snake will be recaptured in any given year is about 0.4 (habita A) and about 0.33 (habitat B). Sampling effort within a year had little effect on the probability of recapture. Our best estimate of annual survibval of 0.75 for the two habitats combined compares well with other previous estimates in viperids and in V. aspis in particular. We found no detectable differences in the survival rates between sexes even when the two habitats were combined. We found weak evidence that there was a difference in the recapture probability between the sexes. The minimal adequate model for the combined data set suggested that there is a higher probability of recapturing surviving females (0.545) than males (0.331).
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département de Biologie
Language
  • English
Classification
Biological sciences
License
License undefined
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/307755
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