Life history of sea kraits in New Caledonia

摘要

Two species of sea kraits (Laticaudidae) occur in New Caledonia. The yellow sea krait Laticauda saintgironsi, closely related to L.colubrina and L. frontalis, is endemic to the area. The blue sea krait (L. laticaudata) is widespread over the west Pacific, howeveran absence of careful taxonomic studies impedes to determine to what extent it might be also an endemic species. Paradoxically,despite their abundance, there is very little scientific information on the neo-caledonian sea kraits. Since 2002 we set up a markrecapture study on 10 islets. We gathered the most comprehensive data set on the morphology and ecology of these two speciesof snake. We captured and individually marked more than 4,000 snakes, and gathered more than 3,000 recaptures. We providethe mean values for the body size, body mass, number of rings of the two species. We also present the first information about thereproduction phenology. Despite superficial similarities, we detected significant difference between the two species for all the cha-racteristics we investigated.