How do King Cobras move across a major highway? Unintentional wildlife crossing structures may facilitate movement.

ABSTRACT: Global road networks continue to expand, and the wildlife responses to these landscape-level changes need to be understood to advise long-term management decisions. Roads have high mortality risk to snakes because snakes typically move slowly and can be intentionally targeted by drivers.We investigated how radio-tracked King Cobras (Ophiophagus hannah) traverse a major highway in northeast Thailand, and if reproductive cycles were associated with road hazards.We surveyed a 15.3 km stretch of Highway 304 to determine if there were any locations where snakes could safely move across the road (e.g., culverts and bridges). We used recurse analyses to detect possible road-crossing events, and used dynamic Brownian Bridge Movement Models (dBBMMs) to show movement pathways association with

SUBMITTER: Jones MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8928851 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature