DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS AND ECOLOGICAL NICHES OF THE RED-TONGUED PIT VIPER (Gloydius ussuriensis) AND THE CENTRAL ASIAN PIT VIPER (Gloydius intermedius) IN CHEONMASAN MOUNTAIN, SOUTH KOREA

Studies on the distribution of species are important to understanding the interspecific ecological niche and habitat selection through geographic environmental information. Particularly, vipers in the same genus have been an im-portant topic because they show differences in the preferred geographical environment, depending on the distance of the phylogenetic relationship. This study investigated the geographical environment of red-tongued pit vipers (Gloydius ussuriensis) and Central Asian pit vipers (Gloydius intermedius) in the mountainous area, Cheonmasan Mountain County Park, South Korea, from April 2012 to October 2014, to understand the relationships among their habitat characteristics and ecological niche. Red-tongued pit vipers mainly lived in low altitude, wet valley areas with a low solar reflectance, while Central Asian pit vipers inhabited high altitude, dry land with large amounts of sunshine. As a result, our study supports that the ecological niche of red-tongued pit vipers and Central Asian pit vipers, inhibiting in Cheonmasan Mountain was overlapped low according to the majority of geograph-ical environmental variables. The differentiated diet preference might be took into consideration as one of the po-tential key factors to the ecological niche differentiation among two species.