Meeting Abstract
Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) are an invasive species of concern in the Florida Everglades and pose a significant threat to native vertebrates, especially birds and mammals. Their reproductive ecology is poorly understood in their invasive range, and successful management strategies may be derived from establishing fundamental knowledge of their sexual signaling. Thus, this project is designed to determine the role of chemical signals in Burmese python reproduction. We have been collecting and processing shed skins from wild caught male and female pythons and are extracting skin lipids from these sheds. Sex pheromones in other species of snakes are abundant in both the exposed surface of intact snake skin and in shed skins, with the latter accurately reflecting the native composition of skin lipids while being much easier to collect. Extracts from the sheds will be fractionated using column chromatography and analyzed using GC-MS. We then plan on using multidimensional analysis to quantify expression differences between sexes, seasons and individuals. We predict that Burmese pythons, like garter snakes and brown tree snakes, express a series of long-chain methyl ketones that are sexually dimorphic and may be capable of eliciting trailing behavior from wild males in the field during the breeding season.
