Preliminary report on a reptile community ecology in a suburban habitat of northern italy

Abstract

In 1988 and 1989 we investigated the ecology of a reptile community inhabiting a suburban area altered by human activity. Recent changes in and partial destruction of diversified habitats have been directly involved in the faunistic paucity of all the area, where only three lizard and three snake species have been found, but only four of which are really common. The known thermal preference of every species has been confirmed, and some differences among taxa have been observed in lizard sex-ratio and snake biometry. Available and suitable habitats are discontinuous in the area, which probably explains the different observed distribution of the reptile community. © 1994 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.