Road Kill of Snakes on a Highway in an Orinoco Ecosystem: Landscape Factors and Species Traits Related to Their Mortality

We sampled the snake fauna in 13 landscapes along 80 km of highway and in the adjacent vegetation cover in the Colombian Llanos. We registered 119 snakes belonging to 33 species. Traffic levels significantly influenced rates of snake road kill, while adjacent vegetation cover, rainfall seasonality, and landscape structure and composition did not. We classified the species into seven ecological groups based upon foraging strategy, body length, and habitat preferences. Although most of the roadkilled species had an active foraging strategy, all of the ecological groups contained some species tha... Mehr ...