Long- and short-term impact of temperature on snake detection in the wild: further evidence from the snake <em>Hemorrhois hippocrepis</em>

Abstract

Global change is causing an average temperature increment which affects several aspects of organisms’ biology, especially in ectotherms. Nevertheless, there is still scant knowledge about how this change is affecting reptiles. This paper shows that, the higher average temperature in a year, the more individuals of the snake Hemorrhois hippocrepis are found in the field, because temperature increases the snakes’ activity. Furthermore, the quantity of snakes found was also correlated with the temperature of the previous years. Our results suggest that environmental temperature increases the population size of this species, which could benefit from the temperature increment caused by climatic change. However, we did not find an increase in population size with the advance of years, suggesting that other factors have negatively impacted on this species, balancing the effect of increasing temperature.