Email Elliot
About Elliot
Elliot Schoenig is a lifelong field herper-turned-herpetologist that has been chasing snakes around Davis since his childhood in the mid 90s. He studied Ecology and Evolution at UC Santa Cruz, graduating with a BSc in 2017. While at Santa Cruz, he ran a herpetological inventory project with California State Parks using coverboard grids and visual searches to survey for San Francisco gartersnakes, California red-legged frogs, and other reptile and amphibian species that culminated in a senior project comparing preferences of alligator lizard species across different habitats and thermal gradients
After completing his undergraduate, he started as a seasonal wildlife technician with the US Geological Survey (USGS) studying giant gartersnakes. This seasonal gig turned into a year-round position with USGS, where he has been lucky enough to study a variety of rare and imperiled herp species around California and Nevada, including western pond turtles, Dixie Valley toads, western spadefoot toads, and legless lizards, among others. His main professional focus has been as project manager for USGS’ long-term work with San Francisco gartersnakes, including many return visits to the same field sites he frequented during his undergraduate.
Elliot's graduate research at UC Davis is in conjunction with his ongoing San Francisco gartersnake field work, where USGS biologists have been marking snakes of all species since the mid 2000s. His interests include population fluctuations in response to climate and land use and reproductive and natural history of rare and understudied species.