Animalia > Chordata > Squamata > Colubridae > Thamnophis > Thamnophis sirtalis

Thamnophis sirtalis (Common Garter Snake)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) is a species of natricine snake, which is indigenous to North America and found widely across the continent. Most common garter snakes have a pattern of yellow stripes on a brown or green background, and their average total length (including tail) is about 55 cm (22 in), with a maximum total length of about 137 cm (54 in). The average body mass is 150 g (5.3 oz).
View Wikipedia Record: Thamnophis sirtalis

Infraspecies

Thamnophis sirtalis annectens (Texas gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis concinnus (Red-spotted gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis dorsalis (New Mexico gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis fitchi (Valley gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis (California red-sided gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis pallidulus (Maritime Garter Snake)
Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis (Red-sided gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis pickeringii (Gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis semifasciatus
Thamnophis sirtalis similis (Blue-striped gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis (Eastern gartersnake)
Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia (San Francisco gartersnake)

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  154 grams
Female Weight [1]  170 grams
Male Weight [1]  138 grams
Weight Dimorphism [1]  23.2 %
Diet [2]  Carnivore
Female Maturity [3]  2 years
Male Maturity [3]  2 years
Gestation [3]  3 months 10 days
Hibernates [2]  Yes
Litter Size [4]  17
Litters / Year [1]  1
Maximum Longevity [3]  14 years

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

+ Click for partial list (100)Full list (116)

Ecosystems

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
California Floristic Province Mexico, United States No

Emblem of

Massachusetts

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Providers

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Macracanthorhynchus ingens[11]
Rhabdias fuscovenosa[11]

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
4A neglected life-history trait: clutch-size variance in snakes, R. Shine and R. A. Seigel, J. Zool. Lond. (1996) 239, 209-223
5Resources of a Snake Community in Prairie-Woodland Habitat of Northeastern Kansas, Henry S. Fitch, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, Wildlife Research Report 13: 83-98 (1982)
6Study of Northern Virginia Ecology
7Anurans as prey: an exploratory analysis and size relationships between predators and their prey, L. F. Toledo, R. S. Ribeiro & C. F. B. Haddad, Journal of Zoology 271 (2007) 170–177
8Jorrit 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.
9Brodie, Edmund D., III, et al. "Sex-biased predation on newts of the genus Taricha by a novel predator and its relationship with tetrodotoxin toxicity." The American Midland Naturalist 165.2 (2011): 389+. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 July 2014.
10Zapus princeps, E. Blake Hart, Mark C. Belk, Eralee Jordan, and Malinda W. Gonzalez, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 749, pp. 1–7 (2004)
11Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
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