Licht-im-Terrarium: Literaturdatenbank
Licht-im-Terrarium: Literaturdatenbank |
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Hodges, R. (2018). Seeing the heat with inexpensive thermography: natural history observations on the northern viper (vipera berus) and grass snake (natrix helvetica). The Herpetological Bulletin, 144, 5–13. Added by: Sarina (2019-03-01 15:22:52) Last edited by: Sarina (2019-03-01 15:23:33) |
| Resource type: Journal Article BibTeX citation key: Hodges2018 View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: Deutsch = German Keywords: Infrarot = Infrared, Schlangen = Snakes, Thermoregulation = Thermoregulation Creators: Hodges Collection: The Herpetological Bulletin |
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| Abstract |
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The advent of thermal imaging (TI) cameras that attach to smartphones has dramatically reduced the cost of thermography. TI cameras are now within easy reach of naturalists and this has given an opportunity to field test one model, the FLIR ONE, on grass snakes and northern vipers. The potential of the camera to provide useful insights into snake thermal ecology is demonstrated in six short case studies; a further three case studies highlight some practical constraints. The main constraint was that although the camera contributed very precise temperature measurements, to 0.1˚C, individual measurements did not always correspond to independently measured values. Nevertheless, the temperature differences between subjects were well maintained, even following automatic recalibration of the camera. Consequently, the temperature differences between subjects in the same sequence of thermographs are reliable and the case studies demonstrate that these can be very informative. For example, they show the patchy heat distribution across the artificial refuges used in reptile monitoring; the thermal imprint of a grass snake resting below a refuge; and the warming of a female viper basking on an ant hill, where the rate of warming seemed to differ between the front and back end of the snake. The camera was fun to use and there is still great potential for thermography to reveal the thermal secrets of reptiles in natural environments and as an adjunct to captive husbandry
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