We radiotracked eight, free-living, Red-Bellied Mudsnakes (Farancia abacura) from April to October 2019 in a bottomland hardwood forest wetland in Central Arkansas. Four snakes emerged in April from their overwintering sites in an earthen dam of a 1.2 ha pond and confined all of their movements to the pond basin. All four snakes were lost to predators during the course of the year. Four other snakes emerged from overwintering and dispersed up to 1580 m from the pond. One dispersing snake was lost to a predator when it returned to the pond. Dispersing snakes followed ephemeral streams upstream and downstream, ditches, and flooded bottomlands. The dispersal movements occurred in an extraordinarily wet period that began in August 2018 and continued through August 2019. These results contrasted sharply with the radiotracking results of eight, free-living, F. abacura at the same locality in 2018, each of which maintained a home range in the pond and experienced no predation. Included in the eight 2018 snakes were three of the dispersing snakes radiotracked in 2019. Possible year-to-year variation in movement patterns driven by environmental variability and predator pressure should be considered in designing management plans for at-risk wetland species.

我们无线电记录了八只自由活动的红腹Mudsnakes（Farancia abacura）于2019年4月至10月在阿肯色州中部的一处底层硬木森林湿地中进行。四月份，四只蛇从越冬地点出现在一个1.2公顷池塘的土坝中，并将它们的活动限制在池塘盆地内。在这一年中，所有四条蛇都被掠食者迷失了。越冬出现了另外四条蛇，它们从池塘散布到1580 m。当它返回池塘时，一条分散的蛇被捕食者迷失了。分散的蛇跟随上游和下游的短暂河流，沟渠和水底淹没。扩散运动发生在一个非常潮湿的时期，该时期始于2018年8月，一直持续到2019年8月。这些结果与八个自由活动的F. abacura的无线电跟踪结果形成鲜明对比。在2018年的同一地点，每个人都在池塘里维持家园的范围，并且没有掠食。在2018年的八条蛇中，有三条在2019年进行了放射跟踪，其中有四条蛇。在设计高危湿地物种的管理计划时，应考虑到环境变异性和捕食者压力驱动的运动模式可能逐年变化。