Waye, Heather Louise2024-08-152024-08-1519951995https://hdl.handle.net/1828/20061Individual and population-specific patterns of growth, and variations in these patterns, can be determined if age structure is known; this allows the dynamics of populations to be more accurately modelled and projected into the future. Besides contributing to our understanding of the fundamental ecological issue of limitation of distribution and abundance, such knowledge is critical to management or conservation plans for many species. Skeletochronology, the reading of growth rings in bony structures, has been used extensively to determine the ages of individual fish and, to a lesser extent, reptiles and amphibians. This study evaluates the use of skeletochronology to determine the ages of garter snakes (Thamnophis spp.) with emphasis on the development of techniques that allow the sampling of bone structures from live animals. Rings were observed in the caudal vertebrae of three species of garter snakes and were consistent in number within individual snakes. The validity of growth rings as indicators of age was established using snakes raised in the laboratory under differing hibernation regimes, and through recapture and resampling of snakes caught the previous year. The age structure of this population of garter snakes is discussed, and a preliminary life table based on age was constructed. Skeletochronology has the potential to be an important and useful technique for the study of age in snakes, but is very labour-intensive and best used as part of a large, long-term sampling project.88 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis