Drinking by sea snakes from oceanic freshwater lenses at first rainfall ending seasonal drought.

ABSTRACT: Acquisition of fresh water (FW) is problematic for FW-dependent animals living in marine environments that are distant from sources of FW associated with land. Knowledge of how marine vertebrates respond to oceanic rainfall, and indeed the drinking responses of vertebrates generally following drought, is extremely scant. The Yellow-bellied Sea Snake (Hydrophis platurus) is the only pelagic species of squamate reptile and ranges across the Indo-Pacific oceans, having one of the largest geographic distributions of any vertebrate species. It requires FW and dehydrates at sea during periods of drought. Here we report drinking behaviors of sea snakes precisely at the transition from dry to wet season when rainfall first impacted the ocean following 6 months of seasonal drought. We show that the

SUBMITTER: Lillywhite HB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6366689 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature