An individual's morphology is shaped by the environmental pressures it experiences, and
the resulting morphological response is the culmination of both genetic factors and …

In a widespread species, a matching of phenotypic traits to local environmental optima is
generally attributed to site-specific adaptation. However, the same matching can occur via …

Environmental variables, such as resource quality, shape growth in organisms, dictating
body size, an important correlate of fitness. Variation in prey characteristics among …

Anatomy compromises the precision and accuracy of measurements made of the body
length and head size of live snakes. Body measures (snout‐vent length, SVL) incorporate …

Investigating dietary resource utilization and head morphology of gape-limited predators can
provide a basis for understanding interspecific competition and species coexistence. For …

Mean prey size often varies across landscapes, resulting in predator populations having
differing access to energetic resources. Shifts in resource quality are likely to cause …

Variation in prey characteristics among populations is frequently associated with similar
variation in predator body sizes. Increasingly, human-mediated alterations in prey …

The diamondback water snake, Nerodia rhombifer (Hallowell, 1852), is a large, New World
natricine occurring in the Upper Mississippi and Lower Illinois Rivers through the Great …

To the best of our knowledge, this note represents the first report of N. erythrogaster
attempting to predate on the cyprinid fish C. auratus in the wild. The only North American …

Diagnosis DIAGNOSIS (rhombifer): The diamond-back water snake can be distinguished
from many other species of the genus by its large number (25 to 31, usually 27) of scale …