ABSTRACT
The introduced water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes, is a conspicuous and dominant plant in many aquatic communities of the southeastern US This perennial forms monocultures of dense, interlocking vegetation at the water’s surface which supports an abundant and diverse assemblage of amphibians, reptiles, and fishes. This chapter describes a quantitative method for censusing snake populations associated with water hyacinths, but the technique also effectively samples other vertebrate groups that occur in hyacinths. Hyacinth sieve is preferred for quantitative sampling as it allows an estimate of the variance in snake density. Marking and releasing the snakes for recapture generally is impractical because sampling disrupts the hyacinth habitat. During periods of drought large areas of hyacinths may be exposed on land. Many aquatic snake species remain coiled in shallow burrows beneath the hyacinth root masses during these periods and are subject to quantitative sampling.
