The Mountain And The Viper In Italian Free Download
Sofia Gilcrease
I have lived on the shores of (ta && ta.queueForLoad ? ta.queueForLoad : function(f, g)document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', f);)(function()ta.trackEventOnPage('postLinkInline', 'impression', 'postLinks-13109497', '');, 'log_autolink_impression');Lake Como for several years now and have seen quite a few snakes (both water and other)during this time. My house is right in front of the lake and every summer there are several water snakes in front of the house (they are not as rare as someone has suggested). The normal water snake is harmless, has a small round head, maybe 25 cm lenght and is extremely shy. You can sometimes see them in the morning, lying on the water's surface, when the lake is still calm/quiet. Last summer, however, I had a different kind of water snake in my boat house. She was bigger (approx 45 cm), with a triangular head (like a Viper/poisonous) and very curious and cocky. I was swimming with friends in front of my house and all of a sudden, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and it was her head. The snake was swimming right next to me and even as my friends and I started splashing water and screaming, she took her merry time to go away. After several of these encounters, my gardener and I cornered her in the boat house and killed her. She was a croce - cross between water snake and Viper and we don't know for sure if she was poisonous or not. A few days ago, I saw another snake like this in front of the house and I have not gone swimming since. These croces are becoming more frequent in the area. Regarding land snakes. The black snake with a round head, mentioned in one of the posts is a corzone, totally harmless and very shy but they can get quite large. It is great if you have one in the garden as they get rid of insects etc. The Viper is more dangerous. You can spot a Viper by it's flat triangular head. They can be quite dangeous and can attack you. Be careful leaning against or sitting on the old stone walls in the area - snakes love lying on them because of the heat. Finally, in the mountains, above 1500m, there is a very dangeous snake. It's name beegins with an A- can't remember the rest. They are particularly aggressive in July/August. It is best not to go barefoot in the area.
Yes, I think you are right. The really dangerous snake in the mountains is called the asp. A farmer in Sala Comacina was attacked by one a few summers ago in the mountains. He literally had to run for his life and was in a state of shock. But it is only July/August that they are that aggressive. A good piece of advice for the (ta && ta.queueForLoad ? ta.queueForLoad : function(f, g)document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', f);)(function()ta.trackEventOnPage('postLinkInline', 'impression', 'postLinks-13133299', '');, 'log_autolink_impression');Lake Como area in general is not to walk barefoot anywhere, including in your garden or house. This is also because of scorpions. If you do see a scorpion, it is a pretty sure sign that rain is coming in the next day or so.
As usual, I wish I could have taken this guy up into the Rocky mountains, or better yet, the Italian countryside for some extended use and testing. I had to settle on the less exotic location of my back yard. The good news is that I had a dead ficus tree that was in desperate need of an ass kicking, so I can at least assure you that this knife saw a good amount of use.
One taxonomic group that is specifically threatened by climate change is Mountain viper species of the recently recognized genus, Montivipera37 which is an intriguing model of neo-endemism in Mediterranean ecosystems. The interaction of geomorphologic, tectonic and climatic drivers have formed a complex and heterogeneous assemblage in this bioregion38,39,40. The high magnitude of Tertiary-Quaternary climate fluctuations has caused many taxa to undergo repetitive patterns of expansion, contraction and isolation41,42. In addition, severe ecological conditions and high spatial divergence in most parts of these Mediterranean ecosystems have resulted in the emergence of a substantial degree of recent speciation events38, i.e. neo-endemism43,44. As a consequence, the Near and Middle East embrace the richest herpetofauna and harbor the highest diversity of true vipers within the Palearctic bioregion44,45.
The distribution of Montivipera species is constrained by the Mediterranean climate regime from the flat coast of western Turkey to the mountainous landscapes of the Irano-Anatoly and the southern Caucasus regions (Fig. 1). Strong isolations through repeated retractions to isolated mountain tops during late Tertiary climatic fluctuations have caused vicariant allopatric speciation and a rapid rate of diversifications in this genus7,45. Generally (and from a phylogenetic viewpoint), Montivipera species are categorized into two complexes; Xanthina and Raddei37, yet their taxonomy remains debated45. The Xanthina complex includes the species M. xanthina, M. wagneri, and M. bornmuelleri with two species-subspecies M. b. albizona and M. b. bulgardaghica. The Raddei complex contains M. raddei, M. latifii, M. albicornuta and M. kuhrangica. Isolated distribution ranges and population declines due to habitat loss and illegal collection for antivenin production, especially of the Raddei complex46, have resulted in all Montivipera species being classified as threatened in the Red List of the IUCN, except for M. xanthina.
Global distribution of phylogeographic Montivipera clades (PGMCs) (a), their phylogenetic relationship based on Stümpel, et al.45 (b), and altitudinal distribution patterns in the study area (c).
The restricted current distribution ranges and small population sizes of all Montivipera species, and the ongoing threats from climate change urge for an assessment of their vulnerability and for developing conservation priorities in response to projected climate trends. Here, we assess the risks of mountain vipers to lose habitat from climate change in a hotspot of the Palearctic herpetofauna. More specifically, we address the following questions: (1) how could projected climate change affect the area of suitable habitat (AOO) in mountain vipers; (2) to what degree could projected climate change affect patch connectivity and isolation; and (3) how do these changes affect the IUCN risk assessment criteria of mountain vipers. To answer these questions, we used ENM to derive climatically suitable habitats as an index of currently occupied areas (AOO) of Montivipera genus in the eastern Mediterranean climatic regime (Irano-Anatoly and the southern Caucasus). We then removed anthropogenically converted land areas from the modelled habitats and measured projected shifts and/or shrinkages of the AOO to assess current and forthcoming extinction risks of the species under future climates. By using landscape ecology analyses, we further assessed the projected long-term persistence of the species complexes through tracking the spatial configuration of suitable habitats.
Boxplot of the comparison of percentage loss (red) and gain (green) of climatically suitable patches for the three Montivipera clades under climate change scenarios. Boxplots show variation between four GCM climate projection from ensemble models.
The results from the landscape analysis showed a decreasing trend in the extent and number of patches projected to remain climatically suitable for all Montivipera clades. While, the decreasing trend in the number of patches for the Xanthina clade was low, the decreasing trend of the average patch size was striking for this group (Fig. 7a). Also, both the patch isolation (i.e. aggregation index) and the patch fragmentation (i.e. splitting index) showed increasing trends from current to projected future climates (Fig. 7a). This was particularly the case for the mountain-dwelling clades Bornmuelleri and Raddei, which in turn were reasonably consistent with their projected altitudinal upward shifts (Table 2).
Projected changes in the landscape metrics number of patch (NP), proportion of the landscape (PL), aggregation index (AI) and splitting index (SI) of climatically suitable patches for Montivipera species in eastern Mediterranean Basin.
While there is a proliferation in studies analyzing the projected impact of climate change on biodiversity range shifts16,22, bioclimatic niche projections mostly neglect important drivers of ecological integrity55, and often fail to address habitat connectivity, despite being an important element for successful conservation of biodiversity under a changing climate56,57. Here, by using metrics of patch configuration, we incorporated the concept of landscape integrity to assess the impact of climate change on the capacity for dispersal and long-term resistance of the species. Furthermore, we eliminated areas that are unsuitable because of human land transformation as extracted from a human footprint dataset. This allowed us to incorporate human-induced barriers into our landscape integrity analysis and increased the realism in projections to the landscape scale. Our approach demonstrated that significant proportions of climatically suitable habitats of mountain vipers are both inaccessible and/or highly fragmented due to the dominance of humanized developments. The decline in both the extent and number of suitable habitat patches was consistent among all species, with the Raddei clade showing a lower decrease in the number of patches compared to the Xanthina and Bornmuelleri clades, although its suitable habitat range was highly reduced (Fig. 7a). We thus conclude that the currently suitable habitat patches for the latter two groups will likely become too small for supporting viable populations in the future, as they will lose many of these small marginal patches. For the former, the currently suitable habitat represents core patches that will still remain suitable in the future, albeit losing extent.
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