ABSTRACT
Snakes are among the most successful of vertebrates, as indicated by their nearly world-wide distribution and occupancy of a wide range of latitudes, altitudes, and habitats. Given their wide distribution and diverse evolutionary lineages, it is not surprising that considerable variation in patterns of reproductive cyclicity exist. Historically, as seen in other areas of early biological inquiry, those species inhabiting temperate zones have received an inequitable degree of attention compared to those in subtropical and tropical zones. It was not until the mid-1960s to early 1970s that this condition was considered sufficiently alleviated by some (e.g., Fitch 1970), but numerically, at least, the disparity between studies on temperate and tropical zones persisted into the 1980s (Seigel and Ford 1987) and indeed to present. In the last 20 years however, there has been a marked increase in studies from certain understudied regions, most notably, South America and Australia. It is largely those additions that make the present chapter possible.
