I study a species called the eastern worm snake. Worm snakes are small snakes that are native to the U.S. and spend most of their time underground, eating earthworms. I knew that I wanted to focus my research on the conservation of amphibians and reptiles, but worm snakes were not on my radar until a former professor asked if I would be interested in designing a research study about them. I was initially clueless about the species, but after an extensive literature review I decided to study habitat selection.
Habitat selection is the process by which an animal chooses which place to make their home. Different habitats have varying characteristics, such as temperature, types of vegetation, soil composition and a myriad other factors. The idea behind studying habitat selection is to build a model to determine which of these habitat characteristics matter to worm snakes. I do this by comparing the habitat characteristics where the snakes are living to the habitat characteristics available at all sites where they could potentially live. On the surface, this does not sound all that challenging. The problem with worm snakes is that they are too small to implant with transmitters (the largest worm snakes are about a foot long and weigh about half an ounce) so the only way to find them is to spend a lot of time searching for them.
Worm snakes spend most of their time underground, but when they are not underground they are usually underneath or buried within rotted logs. My typical field day involves performing time-constrained searches, which means I pick a random spot at my field site and then search for an hour in that spot, turning over every log I can. It can become tedious since it generally takes about two hours of searching to find a snake and it is very hard work since most of the logs are bigger than I am! When I find a snake I stop and pull out all my various bits of equipment to measure habitat characteristics. I also find another random spot and record habitat characteristics there to compare them to where I found the snake.
I am hoping to use this research for my thesis since I will be starting a master’s program in Conservation Science and Policy this fall. This project is the first step in a plan I have to determine whether worm snakes have extended their range after European colonists introduced earthworms to areas that previously did not have any, thereby providing a food source for the snakes to exploit. Since we have had such a cold spring, my field season has been delayed this year and I have yet to find any new worm snakes to add to the thirty that I found last year. However, I do find a lot of other interesting creatures under the logs when I am searching and I was excited to find my first smooth earthsnake, another small snake that lives underground.
