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Posted by Byron Larkin on July 12, 2002 at 14:19:47:
In Reply to: I disagree posted by David L. Martin on July 11, 2002 at 19:38:21:
Your comments are quite interesting, and I appreciate your willingness to continue this discussion. I am starting to detect, however, a slight, confrontational spin in your latest rebuttal, and I think that is something that we should both try to avoid. We are obviously looking at this issue through very different lenses, and, as such, we should seek clarity, rather than conflict, as we try to focus our collective vision on this fascinating subject. That said, I feel compelled to take issue with several comments that appear in your latest response. I will try my best to avoid “ruffling your feathers”, but I suspect that I will fail in at least one instance. Maybe more. Please accept my apology, in advance.
First, your discussion on road-kills along U.S. 441 and I-75, which cross Payne’s Prairie, would be an excellent one if we were talking about frogs, water snakes, or Pigmy rattlers, but it has little bearing on the subject of EDB’s. Payne’s Prairie is essentially a 21,000 acre sinkhole, on the outskirts of Gainesville, which consists primarily of wet meadows, flooded marshlands, and lakes. It has never been good EDB habitat, and it is about the last place that anyone who knew what they were doing would go to find one today, or in the past. They are there, of course, but their numbers have never been great. You are certainly correct, however, that vehicles are the top predators on the Prairie. During seasonal floods, it is not uncommon for thousands of reptiles and amphibians to be slaughtered in a 24-hour period along the levied highways that transverse the region. The vast majority of these hapless creatures, however, are water snakes and frogs. As a sidebar, in the last two decades, Fire ants have become a very real threat to much of the smaller fauna in the region. It is believed by some, that predation of eggs and hatchlings by Fire ants, rather than road-kills by Firebirds may explain the dramatic decrease in some egg-laying species, such as the Florida Kingsnake, which was once relatively common on the Prairie. In any case, if you doubt that there are no longer any large tracts of good EDB habitat in Florida that are not completely “crisscrossed with a network of roads”, I would suggest you look at the eastern and western segments of Eglin AFB, a 725 square-mile military reserve in the Panhandle; huge portions of Gulf, Liberty, Franklin, and Wakulla counties southwest of Tallahassee; most of Taylor, Lafayette, and Dixie counties in the Big Bend; and, as I mentioned in an earlier post, hundreds of square miles of territory to the north and south of Lake Okeechobee.
Next, I would like to address several of your comments concerning EDB mortality rates, habitat requirements, and size considerations that I think require a clarification, or at least a caveat on your part to avoid any misinterpretation by someone who might stumble upon this thread in the future. First, your assertion that “road mortality is one of the main sources of mortality on adult adamanteus, perhaps the single biggest one” is of course absolutely true. However, it is misleading, and not very meaningful. Since full-grown EDB’s have very few natural predators to speak of, other than an occasional Alligator, what else would cause mortality other than forest fires, habitat destruction, and ignorant Rednecks? If we were talking about adult Garter snakes, which have a host of natural predators to contend with, the same finding would be quite meaningful to the discussion.
I am also more than a little dubious about the statement “ Adult adamanteus [home range] averages 400-600 acres”. While some limited studies do, in fact, suggest that an adult EDB will occasionally range over that much territory over a period of time, there is simply not enough data to support that as being the norm for the species. Many other variables may be involved in this behavior such as available food sources, availability of mates, climatological events, and so-on which are certainty not consistent among all populations. In this same regard, I find the statement “Since a 6-footer is twice the mass of a 5-footer, it is reasonable to suppose that it has double the home range” to be nothing short of a preposterous mathematical corollary that could not possibly withstand scientific scrutiny. Likewise, there is simply no meaningful way to compare how many WDBs may be found on a Spring evening crossing a road in Hidalgo County, Texas with how many EDBs may be found on a Spring evening crossing a road in Collier County, Florida. Even if the terrain, climate, and ecology of these areas were the same, which they are emphatically not by any stretch of the imagination, the habits, habitat, foraging behavior, and so-on of these two species are so different that attempted correlations of this sort are simply not valid.
Finally, I have absolutely no doubt that it is possible, but certainly not on any sort of a routine basis, to power-feed a captive EDB (that has the right genes to start with) to the point that a total length of 7 ½+’ could be achieved eventually. I too, have seen one of these pathetically-obese, lethargic specimens that bore only a faint resemblance to a wild counterpart. I have also seen a pathetically-obese, lethargic 780 lb. women at a circus. In both cases, these individuals were so far beyond the anatomical norm for their respective species, that one could only consider them to be freaks. In my humble opinion, a 7 ½' WDB is not a freak. A 7 ½’EDB is a freak. An 8’EDB is a legend. An 8’11” EDB is a lie.
And for you, Steve:
Byron Larkin
Car salesman
South Georgia
