Meeting Abstract
Locomotor performance is heavily influenced by body temperature due to the link between temperature and muscle physiology. As temperature influences the performance of endotherms and ectotherms asymmetrically, temperature can play an important in role in determining the outcome of predator-prey interactions. Rattlesnakes (Crotalus spp.) are a widespread genus in North America and are active during day or night, so their strike performance may vary substantially across seasons and time of day as available environmental temperatures change. Additionally, as rattlesnakes are an abundant meso predator, being a major predator of small mammals and prey resource for many large endothermic predators (large mammals and birds), temperature can influence both their ability to capture prey and their ability to avoid predators. Here, we studied the effects of temperature on the predatory and defensive strikes of rattlesnakes. We found that the kinematics of defensive strikes were positively correlated with body temperatures, however, temperature was less influential in modulating the kinematics of predatory strikes both in the field and the lab. This research provides valuable insight into the potential for temperature, and possibly climate change, to influence large-scale ecological processes that are mediated by endotherm-ectotherm predator-prey interactions.
