BULLETIN FLORIDA MUSEUM NATURAL HISTORY VOL. 38, PT. 1(5)


FIGURE 1.-Home ranges of six eastern diamondback rattlesnakes at the Ordway Preserve, Putnam Co., FL.
The home range represented by the dashed line corresponds to M3, who was tracked for 864 days. The
symbol within each range represents the sex of the snake. 1 = Ashley Lake; 2 = Goose Lake; 3 = McCloud
Lake; 4 = Anderson Cue Lake; 5 = Long Pond.


continue with this line of reasoning, and make the bold assumption that all upland
habitats (2500 ha) at the Ordway are similarly blessed with diamondbacks, there
are approximately 500 adult C. adamanteus residing on the preserve. Means
estimated that there were roughly 49 adult diamondbacks at the 400-ha Tall
Timbers study area, or a density of 1 rattlesnake per 8 ha (Means 1986).

 Seasonal Activity Patterns.- I have been able to identify, from the literature,
four seasonal activity patterns for snakes. The first pattern consists of movements
by temperate snakes to and from a hibernaculum. Most snakes of cold environs,
including all the temperate species of rattlesnakes in the genera Crotalus and
Sistrurus, aggregate in ancestral dens during the winter, either because reliable
denning areas are a scarce resource or because the possibility of dehydration is
lessened from the large mass of bodies in close proximity (Costanzo 1989). In the
spring, snakes bask at the den; mating may take place there before they leave for
their summer ranges. These ranges may be nearby or may lie several kilometers
away (Landreth 1973). The snakes forage during the summer and return to the
same, or a nearby, den in the fall. Home ranges of these snakes consist of denning