Abstract
Abstract: Elaphe quadrivirgata on Tadanae-jima Island shows a clear insular gigantism. Based on data from captive animals, we compared growth rates over the first two years after hatching between this population and a conspe-cific population from the Japan mainland. The purpose of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that early growth rates in snakes in the insular gigan-tism population are higher than those in conspecific non-gigantic populations under the same feeding schedule. Growth rates in snout-vent length and body mass of Tadanae-jima snakes were not higher than those of main island snakes, and thus, the hypothesis was rejected. This result suggests that the gigantism in E. quadrivirgata on Tadanae-jima Island is not caused by a genetically based modification for rapid growth before maturation. Key words: Elaphe quadrivirgata; Growth; Izu Islands; Insular gigantism; Snake INTRODUCTION Body size is a fundamental character that affects almost all life history traits of animals (Schmidt-Nielsen, 1984). Intraspecific geo-graphic variations in body size would, there-fore, offer important opportunities to study microevolution of organisms. To understand the process of microevolution, it is essential to elucidate the proximate factors that cause the phenotypic variation in body size.
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