Animalia > Chordata > Squamata > Colubridae > Pituophis > Pituophis catenifer

Pituophis catenifer (Gopher Snake; Bullsnake and gopher snake)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Pituophis catenifer is a species of nonvenomous colubrid snake endemic to North America. Six subspecies are currently recognized, including the nominotypical subspecies, Pituophis catenifer catenifer, described here. This snake is often mistaken for the prairie rattlesnake but can be easily distinguished from a rattlesnake by the lack of black and white banding on its tail, and by the shape of its head which is narrower than a rattlesnake's.
View Wikipedia Record: Pituophis catenifer

Infraspecies

Pituophis catenifer affinis (Sonoran gopher snake) (Attributes)
Pituophis catenifer annectens (San Diego gopher snake) (Attributes)
Pituophis catenifer catenifer (Pacific gopher snake) (Attributes)
Pituophis catenifer deserticola (Great Basin gopher snake) (Attributes)
Pituophis catenifer fulginatus
Pituophis catenifer pumilis
Pituophis catenifer pumilus (Santa Cruz gopher snake)
Pituophis catenifer sayi (Bullsnake) (Attributes)

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  16.041 lbs (7.276 kg)
Diet [2]  Carnivore
Gestation [1]  60 days
Litter Size [1]  6
Maximum Longevity [3]  34 years
Nocturnal [2]  Yes

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area Wildlife Refuge   California, United States

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
California Floristic Province Mexico, United States No
Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands Mexico, United States No
Mesoamerica Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Accipiter cooperii (Cooper's Hawk)[5]
Aquila chrysaetos (Golden Eagle)[5]
Bubo virginianus (Great Horned Owl)[5]
Buteo jamaicensis (Red-tailed Hawk)[5]
Buteo swainsoni (Swainson's Hawk)[5]

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 2Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 3de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 4Feeding ecology of North American gopher snakes (Pituophis catenifer, Colubridae), JAVIER A. RODRÍGUEZ-ROBLES, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2002, 77, 165–183
♦ 5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 6Thomomys talpoides, B. J. Verts and Leslie N. Carraway, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 618, pp. 1-11 (1999)
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0