Three-year study maps rich snake diversity on city college campus
MCC | In Today’s Times of India
11th February 2025 | Chennai City Edition
In 1999, researchers mapped 19 different species of snakes in areas bordering Chennai, the highest number reported in a study in and around the city.
Fifteen years later, a study in the nearly two-century-old Madras Christian College (MCC) recorded 23 species and a total of 132 snake sightings, making the bustling campus a hotspot for these solitary creatures.
The three-year-long study mapped medically important venomous snakes such as the cobra, common krait, Russell’s viper, and saw-scaled viper, as well as the rarely sighted Vellore bridal snake, trinket snake, banded racer or Merrem’s racer, Indian sand boa, and slender coral snake.
Most of them were sighted during the monsoon and post-monsoon seasons in vegetation belts near fallen logs, leaf litter, and trees. The study was conducted by MCC, Chennai, and Kalinga Foundation, Karnataka.
“The stable vegetation belts have sustained the snake population on campus for years. Simply put, the snakes were allowed to live.
Being a closed area, only college-associated individuals access it, and there can be practices in place to not harm wildlife, ensuring a safe habitat for these reptiles,” said S R Ganesh from Kalinga Foundation, who is also the corresponding author of the study.
A 1968 study at the campus mapped 18 species. Snake sightings peaked during the monsoon (17 species, 37 snakes) and post-monsoon (18 species, 35 snakes) compared to pre-monsoon (14 species, 33 snakes).
This is likely due to floods forcing snakes out of burrows seeking shelter, the researchers said. In summer, despite fewer snake sightings (27), species diversity was highest (18).
The snakes were spotted in 12 different kinds of microhabitats, with the highest found under logs, trees, leaf litter, bare ground, and water bodies.
“That is where they live, and that may coincide with activity like the breeding for most of the snakes because they are solitary animals that are otherwise harder to spot, unlike birds or butterflies. Snakes seek one another only in a short window of time within their life stages.
Whenever that happens, the chances of finding them are high,” Ganesh said. Amid the live sightings, the researchers also found 11 dead snakes due to roadkill.
PS: You may want to read a similar feature on the Deer in MCC, by the Times of India, on our past blogpost HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment