Noble Elizabeth J, Tipton Anna F, Thompson Morgan L, Powers John R, Stubbs Amber A, Tillett William L, Vázquez Diosdado Jorge A, DeSantis Dominic L
Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences Georgia College & State University Milledgeville Georgia USA.
Department of Biological Sciences University of Texas at El Paso El Paso Texas USA.
Ecol Evol. 2025 Apr 7;15(4):e71102. doi: 10.1002/ece3.71102. eCollection 2025 Apr.
For many species, male mate-searching movements are among the primary determinants of mate location success, and males often incur significant risks associated with elevated movement during reproductive seasons. In an increasingly human-modified world, this often includes more frequent interactions with anthropogenic landscape features, such as roadways. While road mortality represents the most direct and easily measured cost of road interactions, pervasive indirect or sub-lethal costs could carry significant fitness consequences that are more difficult to quantify. We leveraged radio telemetry and accelerometry monitoring to explore the associations between seasonal movement strategies, mate location success, and road interactions in Timber Rattlesnakes () from the piedmont ecoregion of Georgia, USA, where populations are in decline. Males, but not females, significantly elevated measures of movement and the frequency of road interactions during mating seasons, supporting our predictions. By using accelerometers to evaluate fine-scale activity responses to roads, we identified a positive association between road interactions and male activity that was conserved across behavioral seasons. Unexpectedly, there were no associations detected between mate location success and road interactions. However, underlying variation in male movement measures revealed differing associations between movement and mate location success within road interaction categories. We discuss the possible roles of chemosensory disruption and road avoidance in this system, while emphasizing the need for further sampling and targeted field experiments to boost observations of road interactions and refine our understanding of these associations. Ultimately, our results are the first to directly quantify the relationship between elevated male movement in mate searching efforts and increased road interactions by longitudinally monitored rattlesnakes, despite this trend being widely recognized through observational studies of road mortality. For , specifically, roads are implicated as a leading driver of declines range-wide, and our results further highlight mating seasons as a window of highest vulnerability.
对于许多物种而言，雄性寻找配偶的活动是成功找到配偶的主要决定因素之一，并且雄性在繁殖季节因活动增加往往会面临重大风险。在一个日益受到人类改造的世界中，这通常包括与人为景观特征（如道路）更频繁的互动。虽然道路死亡是道路互动最直接且易于衡量的代价，但普遍存在的间接或亚致死代价可能会带来重大的适合度后果，而这些后果更难量化。我们利用无线电遥测和加速度计监测，来探究美国佐治亚州皮埃蒙特生态区数量正在减少的 Timber Rattlesnakes（学名：Crotalus horridus）的季节性活动策略、寻找配偶成功与否与道路互动之间的关联。雄性在交配季节的活动量和道路互动频率显著增加，而雌性则不然，这支持了我们的预测。通过使用加速度计评估对道路的精细尺度活动反应，我们发现道路互动与雄性活动之间存在正相关，且这种相关性在不同行为季节都存在。出乎意料的是，未检测到寻找配偶成功与否与道路互动之间存在关联。然而，雄性活动量测量的潜在差异揭示了在道路互动类别中，活动与寻找配偶成功之间存在不同的关联。我们讨论了化学感应干扰和道路回避在该系统中的可能作用，同时强调需要进一步采样和进行有针对性的野外实验，以增加对道路互动的观察并完善我们对这些关联的理解。最终，我们的结果首次通过对响尾蛇的纵向监测，直接量化了雄性在寻找配偶时活动增加与道路互动增多之间的关系，尽管通过道路死亡的观察研究已广泛认识到这种趋势。对于 Timber Rattlesnakes 来说，具体而言，道路被认为是其在整个分布范围内数量下降的主要驱动因素，我们的结果进一步凸显了交配季节是其最脆弱的时期。
