Wildlife Scientist Spotlight: Coleton Irons
Coleton in the field at Great Basin National Park!
During its 2024 EcoRecon Expedition, the S2S team scrambled up steep, loose rock hills and ventured deep into the high desert of Nevada to telemetry track and locate several Great Basin Rattlesnakes. With the expert guidance and patient teaching of super cool snake scientists Coleton Irons and Maddelin Osterman, we observed and assisted surgical operations, participated in specimen collection, analyzed temperature and conditions at capture-sites, and got to release these awesome creatures back to their dens!
Today’s Science Spotlight focuses on Coleton Irons and his work to study rattlesnakes!
My name is Colton Irons. I am a reptile and amphibian enthusiast and have been since I was just 6 years old. Growing up, I looked towards Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin as my role models and inspiration to study the world of herpetology. I am a second-year master’s student at the University of Nevada, Renoand my project takes me 6 hours directly east to Great Basin National Park to study venomous rattlesnakes!
Coleton preparing to perform surgery on a Rattlesnake!
I specifically study Great Basin rattlesnakes (Crotalus lutosus), which happens to be our most common species of rattlesnake in central and northern Nevada. Most of my time in the field consists of driving on dirt roads and hiking the backcountry of Great Basin National Park in search of these snakes. My research involves studying their movement behavior, which in turn informs us about the types of suitable habitat preferred by this species in the wild for accessing available resources such as vegetation and rock cover to seek refuge from predators. These cover types not only provide protection for snakes, but also breeding grounds and food availability. I am also intrigued by how they utilize different microhabitats for thermoregulating. In all ectotherms, thermoregulation is of utmost importance for survival. They are solely dependent on the thermal conditions of their environment during the first warm day of spring up until temperatures start dropping in late fall to maintain optimal body temperature. Examining the environmental conditions of microhabitats such as the underside of rocks or rotten logs that we have found snakes occupying can progress further in understanding how other species of ectotherms thermoregulate in response to climate change and deciding factors on what management actions to take for conservation.
My field assistant, Maddelin Osterman and I track their movement trajectories in the park using “radio telemetry” that involves an antenna with a cable attached to a receiver that honestly looks like a large walkie-talkie. This device picks up the frequency of a transmitter that is physically inside the body cavity of 20 snakes. When the snakes are captured from the field and brought to the lab, we do a surgical procedure by anesthetizing them, then implanting the transmitter and a datalogger (records and measures body temperature). This helps us monitor their body temperature when they thermoregulate in the spring and summer, as well as when they go into a state of dormancy during hibernation in the fall and winter. Not only do we have temperature sensors in the snakes themselves, but throughout the Baker Creek and Lehman Creek watershed, capturing the scope of the environmental temperature on the landscape. I am also interested in predator-prey relationshipsamong rattlesnakes and rodents, so the entire month of July in 2023 consisted of small mammal trapping to monitor several populations within riparian habitats.
As I go into the data analysis and writing phase of my thesis, I hope to come across unique discoveries on the movement and thermal ecology of the Great Basin rattlesnake. As of right now, I think I am the only herpetologist studying this species of rattlesnake. My favorite quote by Steve Irwin is, “If we can get people excited about animals, then by crikey, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to save them.” I like to tweak this quote to influence my point I like to make about rattlesnakes and all snakes in general, saying “If we can get more people excited and be less afraid ofsnakes, then by Golley, it’ll make it a heck of a lot easier to save them from oncoming traffic on roads.” Road-kill is a major source of snake mortality in the western U.S.
Coleton and Maddelin hard at work to rehabilitate a Great Basin Rattlesnake!
Coleton is currently preparing his body of work to complete his Thesis!
To learn more about Coleton’s work check out the following podcast:
Snake Talk with Dr. Chris Jenkins; Ep 114: Rattlesnakes Great Basin National Park - https://www.audible.com/podcast/114-Rattlesnakes-in-Great-Basin-National-Park/B0DJGSQQT5
You can also check out Coleton’s article entitled “Monitoring Habitat Use by Rattlesnakes.” Here is a link to his article: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/rattlesnakehabitatstudy.htm
