31/10/2024
I thought my tree monitor friends might appreciate these photos from Varanus keithornei habitat in Iron Range, Far North Queensland, Australia. I was there in the late dry season, and the habitat was definitely a lot drier than I anticipated, maybe around 50% humidity. It was also interesting to note that while it is definitely rainforest, it is not at all the most dense/lush rainforest habitat available in the region. In the wet season, humidity approximates 100% and the region experiences flooding in certain locations.
In talking with a local h**p expert, my understanding is that breeding happens seasonally in the mid-dry season so that babies arrive during the more wet season when prey is dramatically more plentiful. I was also told that although they are common in the region, they can be quite cryptic and difficult to spot. When spotted, though they love the canopy, they are not infrequently found foraging on the forest floor.
Obviously, there are lots of potential insights for keepers here, and for me it was an important reminder that what we as keepers imagine when we hear descriptions of habitat doesn’t always give us a true picture of what conditions are actually like. A few of my big takeaways are that prasinus complex animals can probably thrive is a much wider humidity range than conventional wisdom would indicate. It also gave me a better appreciation of the tremendous role that seasonality, particularly around rainfall, plays in the life-cycles of these animals.
Obviously this is one snapshot for one prasinus complex species, so I have no idea how it generalizes into conditions encountered by other species in this complex that occur to the north. My understanding is that conditions on the Torres Straight Islands where prasinus appear are also quite similar.
As for how I plan to apply this information to my tree monitor breeding program: I’m not changing anything for the animals that are successfully reproducing. But for animals that I’ve had a harder time breeding, I plan to incorporate more wet/dry seasonality to see if that makes a difference.
