Understanding faunal responses to habitat restoration is important in assessing restoration success. We investigated occupancy and abundance of snakes at Nachusa Grasslands, a large‐scale grassland restoration in the midwestern United States. Using artificial cover objects, we sampled within a chronosequence of 12 units converted from row‐crop agriculture 2–25 years before the start of our study. Recaptures of marked snakes revealed that movement distances differed among species in accordance with differences in body size, being least in Dekay's Brownsnakes, intermediate in the Plains Gartersnakes and Common Gartersnakes, and greatest in Eastern Foxsnakes. Consistent with this result, occupancy increased with restoration age in Dekay's Brownsnakes but was unrelated to restoration age in the three larger, more mobile species. Similarly, abundance increased with restoration age in Dekay's Brownsnake but was unrelated to restoration age in other species. The Smooth Greensnake, another small‐bodied snake with limited mobility, and an Illinois species of greatest conservation need, was not detected at Nachusa Grasslands. Given detection probabilities observed during a parallel study at a nearby large grassland‐dominated preserve, we infer that the Smooth Greensnake is truly absent from Nachusa Grasslands. Taken together, our results demonstrate that establishment of faunal components following restoration may be time‐dependent with more sedentary species colonizing only slowly (e.g. Dekay's Brownsnakes) or not at all (e.g. Smooth Greensnakes). These results emphasize the need to clearly identify faunal restoration goals and the means to achieve them.

中文翻译：

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草地蛇对高草草原恢复的响应

了解动物对栖息地恢复的反应对于评估恢复成功至关重要。我们调查了Nachusa草原（美国中西部的大型草原恢复地）上蛇的占有和丰度。在研究开始之前的2至25年间，我们使用人工覆盖物按时间顺序对12种单位进行了采样，这些单位是从行作农业转换而来的。夺回有标记的蛇后发现，不同物种之间的移动距离因体型的不同而不同，在Dekay的Brownsnakes中最小，在平原Gartersnakes和Common Gartersnakes中最大，在Eastern Foxsnakes中最大。与这个结果一致，在Dekay's Brownsnakes中，占有率随着恢复年龄的增加而增加，但与三个更大，流动性更大的物种的恢复年龄无关。同样，丰度随着Dekay's Brownsnake的恢复年龄而增加，但与其他物种的恢复年龄无关。在Nachusa草原上未发现光滑的绿蛇（Smooth Greensnake），这是另一种活动受限的小蛇，也是最需要保护的伊利诺伊州物种。考虑到在附近大型草原占主导的保护区进行的平行研究中观察到的检测概率，我们推断，Nachusa草原确实没有光滑的绿蛇。综上所述，我们的结果表明，恢复后动物群的建立可能是时间依赖性的，而更多久坐的物种只能缓慢地定居（例如Dekay's Brownsnakes），而根本不定居（例如光滑的Greensnakes）。这些结果强调需要明确确定动物恢复目标和实现这些目标的手段。