Five-year monitoring of herpetofauna in Woraksan National Park

In this study, in order to determine how climate change may affect amphibian and reptile communities, we surveyedthe numbers of egg clumps and adults of amphibians and the number of reptiles at eight amphibian and nine reptilesurvey sites in Woraksan National Park from March 2005 to September 2009. We assessed the relationships among sixclimate factors (annual minimum temperature, annual maximum temperature, monthly mean temperature, monthlymean precipitation, monthly mean temperature during winter, and monthly mean precipitation during winter); speciesdiversity, evenness, and richness indexes for both amphibians and reptiles; and the number of each species and eggclumps of three amphibian species. First, both the amphibian and reptile species indices evidenced sudden changes in2007, when climate factors in Korea fluctuated substantially. Second, amphibian diversity and evenness were negativelyrelated with annual minimum temperature. Increased monthly mean precipitation had a positive effect in mountainedge sites, but a negative effect in valley sites. Third, reptile species evenness was positively related with monthly meanprecipitation. In particular, the monthly mean temperature in the winter season affected the numbers of the Dione's ratsnake and the Korean tiger keelback snake. These results indicate that amphibian and reptile communities are respondingto climate change in a variety of ways.