Seasonal home range
The mean home range and activity core sizes of male and non-gravid
female snakes were smallest in the winter (December-February) and
increased in size as the year progressed, with largest home range and
activity core sizes occurring in the fall (September-November) (Table
3)(Fig. 6).
Using ANOVA of the mean home range sizes of males and non-gravid females
among seasons, we found there were significant differences for the main
effects of sex (N=9; F1,29,0.05 = 8.978, p = 0.006) and
season (F3,29,0.05 = 28.739, p = 0.001), but no
significant difference for the interaction between sex and season
(F3,29,0.05=2.532, p = 0.077). According to a
posteriori Bonferroni pairwise comparison of the effect of season on
mean home range size of both sexes of snakes in this population, the
mean fall home range size was significantly larger than all other
seasons (p = 0.001) (Table 4). Using pairwise comparison of the effect
of season and sex on mean home range sizes we found that male snakes had
significantly larger home ranges in fall compared to all other seasons.
We also found that female snakes had larger home range sizes in fall
compared to winter and spring (Table 5, Fig. 6).
We found that mean seasonal home range sizes of males and non-gravid
females were statistically equal and followed a similar pattern of
steady increase from winter to summer, but the home range size of male
snakes increased more sharply than that of female snakes from summer to
fall (Fig. 6). We also concluded that the mean fall home range size of
male snakes (25.30 ± 6.08 ha) was larger than the mean home range size
of female snakes (14.74 ± 2.48 ha), but they did not statistically
differ (p = 0.249) (Table 5).