Environmental monitoring
Australian tiger snakes (Notechis scutatus) living in Perth's urban wetlands are accumulating toxic heavy metals in their livers, suggesting that their habitats, which are critical local ecosystems, are contaminated and a significant number of other species may be suffering as a result.
Damian Lettoof, from the Behavioural Ecology Lab in the School of Molecular and Life Sciences at Curtin University, says that not only did the snakes' livers contain moderately high levels of heavy metals, but sediment samples taken from some of the wetland sites were found to have amounts of arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium that exceed current government guidelines.