Field Projects

Sungei Buloh Nature Park

In the Sungei Buloh Nature Reserve, the mangrove forests occupy the interface between sea and land. In this 87 hectare park, we conducted an ecological study of homalopsine snakes.

Southeast Asia has the greatest diversity of marine and freshwater snakes in the world, but for the most part, their biology is very poorly understood. Of the four species of mangrove snakes observed at Sungei Buloh, three are rare. The dog-faced water snake, Cerberus rynchops, is the exception and is very common. We were able to mark and recapture large numbers of Cerberus at Sungei Buloh and are studying their population size, growth, and movements using this technique. We have also used radiotelemetry to follow individual snakes over a period of several weeks. Using this method we have learned more about the movements and habitat utilization of the dog-faced water snake. In conjunction with the telemetry study we monitored microclimatic conditions using environmental data loggers. Sungei Buloh is an ideal site for long-term studies of the population ecology of aquatic snakes.

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