Quantifying Migration in Crotalus Horridus

Crotalus horridus, the timber rattlesnake, ranges across the eastern coast of the United States. They are currently facing a range of conservation issues as their populations are being depleted from snake hunting, collection for the pet for trade and particularly habitat destruction. In order to conserve the species, an understanding of the genetic makeup would be extremely helpful. We used mitochondrial DNA data from the D-Loop region to examine gene flow and dispersal with a timber rattlesnake meta-population. Our results show the presence of two different haplotypes within our samples