Investigating relationships among stress, reproduction, and immunity in three species of watersnake.

Energy is a finite resource required for all physiological processes and must be allocated efficiently among essential activities to ensure fitness and survival. During the active season, adult organisms are expected to prioritize investment in reproduction over other energetically expensive processes, such as responding to immunological challenges. Furthermore, when encountering a stressor, the balance between reproduction and immunity might be disrupted in order to fuel the stress response.

Comparative host-pathogen associations of Snake Fungal Disease in sympatric species of water snakes (Nerodia).

The ascomycete fungus Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola (Oo) is the causative agent of ophidiomycosis (Snake Fungal Disease), which has been detected globally. However, surveillance efforts in the central U.S.

Ontogenetic shifts in the diet of plains hog-nosed snakes (Heterodon nasicus) revealed by stable isotope analysis.

Wild snake diets are difficult to study using traditional methods, but stable isotopes offer several advantages, including integrating dietary information over time, providing data from individuals that have not fed recently, and avoiding bias towards slowly-digesting prey items. We used stable isotope signatures of carbon and nitrogen from scale tissue, red blood cells, and blood plasma to assess the diet of wild plains hog-nosed snakes (Heterodon nasicus) in Illinois. We developed Bayesian mixing models which, taken together, predicted that H.

Assessing multiple endpoints of atrazine ingestion on gravid Northern Watersnakes (Nerodia sipedon) and their offspring.

Ecotoxicological studies that focus on a single endpoint might not accurately and completely represent the true ecological effects of a contaminant. Exposure to atrazine, a widely used herbicide, disrupts endocrine function and sexual development in amphibians, but studies involving live-bearing reptiles are lacking. This study tracks several effects of atrazine ingestion from female Northern Watersnakes (Nerodia sipedon) to their offspring exposed in utero.