Abstract

Use of ant or termite nests (active and inactive) as nest sites by a variety of vertebrate species is well-documented (Riley et al. 1985; Scherba 1965), as are a number of snake genera with chemical and/or morphological specializations that facilitate ant-snake commensalisms (Holm 2008). Less studied is the use of (in particular) ant nests as hibernacula by non-specialist snakes, and the most frequently cited of these involve inactive ant nests (Carpenter 1953; Lang 1971) or ones with very few ants present (Criddle 1937). When ants have been noted as present, they have been identified (sometimes tenuously, Criddle 1937) as of the genus Formica, widespread in North America. Cervone (1983:p140) noted an association between Virginia valeriae pulchra, closely related to Kansas V. v. elegans, and the ant Formica exsectoides. These snakes (plus juvenile Diadophis and one adult Thamnophis brachystoma) hibernated in abandoned mounds. “near the water table.” Cervone (1983:p34) also wrote that “one does not find V. v. pulchra under the same rock with specimens of Formica exsectoides but it may share its habitat with other species of ants.”

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