Temporal Trends in Reptile Occurrence Among Temperate Old-growth, Regrowth and Replanted Woodlands

This data records the species richness and abundance of 6 reptile species across 18 years and 218 sites in the New South Wales South West Slopes bioregion, covering approximately 1.5 million hectares. There were 26 reptile species detected but only 5 of which were recorded enough in order to perform statistical analyses. These were the Snake-Eyed Skink (Morethia boulengeri), straight-browed ctenotus (Ctenotus spaldingi), Southern Marbled Gecko (Christinus marmoratus), Ragged Snake-eyed Skink (Cryptoblepharus pannosus) and Southern Rainbow Skink (Carlia tetradactyla). This data was collected between 2002 and 2020 in the remaining fragmented temperate woodlands of the SWS bioregion using two types of surveys – active searches and artificial substrate arrays. We employed two kinds of surveys for reptiles on our long-term sites – active searches and artificial substrate arrays. The artificial substrate arrays comprised two 1 m x 1 m pieces of corrugated iron, four standard concrete roof tiles, and four hardwood timber railway sleepers. We established an artificial substrate array at the 0 m and 100 m points along the 200 m transect at each of our 218 sites. In each of our nine survey years between 2002 and 2020, we surveyed reptiles using repeated time and area-constrained (20 min/1 ha) active searches of natural habitat and inspections of two arrays of substrates. The time required to check each substrate array was approximately two and half minutes and hence five minutes per site. Active searches included scanning a site for basking animals, raking through leaf litter, lifting logs and surface rocks, and inspecting exfoliating bark and rock crevices. For all survey years, up to four experienced observers visited eight sites each per day over a five-day period. All surveys were conducted on clear, generally sunny days between 0900 hours and 1400 hours.