Flexibility of cutaneous evaporative water loss in response to hydration in pregnant Prairie Rattlesnakes (Crotalus viridis) and their neonates.

Viviparous snakes may be particularly vulnerable to predicted increases in drought due to the high hydric costs associated with embryonic development, gestation, and their reliance on limited free-standing bodies of water or rain events for hydration. Drought will have negative implications for viper populations if females become increasingly water-stressed and resorb developing embryos to conserve bodily water. We conducted a study to investigate the importance of drinking water in late-term pregnancy and its effect on cutaneous evaporative water loss (CEWL).

High thermal quality rookeries facilitate high thermoregulatory accuracy in pregnant female rattlesnakes.

Temperature is a primary factor influencing organismal development, and the fluctuating daily and seasonal thermal regimes of temperate climates may challenge the ability of viviparous reptiles to optimize body temperatures during gestation. Testing how viviparous reptiles navigate highly variable thermal conditions (e.g.

Short communication: Storage time and temperature affect plasma osmolality values in field-collected blood samples.

As climate change alters the hydric regime of many habitats, understanding the hydric physiology of animals becomes increasingly important. Plasma osmolality is a popular metric to assess an organism's hydration, but samples often need to be stored before being analyzed, under varying conditions and for different lengths of time. Previous studies on plasma storage conditions, and how they impact sample integrity, are minimal and have focused more on clinical applications than field studies.