Scaling Relationships of Maximal Gape in Two Species of Large Invasive Snakes, Brown Treesnakes and Burmese Pythons, and Implications for Maximal Prey Size.

ABSTRACT: Snakes are a phylogenetically diverse (> 3500 species) clade of gape-limited predators that consume diverse prey and have considerable ontogenetic and interspecific variation in size, but empirical data on maximal gape are very limited. To test how overall size predicts gape, we quantified the scaling relationships between maximal gape, overall size, and several cranial dimensions for a wide range of sizes (mass 8-64,100 g) for two large, invasive snake species: Burmese pythons (Python molorus bivittatus) and brown treesnakes (Boiga irregularis). Although skull size scaled with negative allometry relative to overall size, isometry and positive allometry commonly occurred for other measurements. For similar snout-vent lengths (SVL), the maximal gape areas of Burmese pythons we

SUBMITTER: Jayne BC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9409080 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature