Gordon W. Schuett, Ph.D.

 

Gordon W. Schuett, Ph.D., is an evolutionary biologist and herpetologist who has conducted extensive laboratory and field research on reptiles. His work has focused primarily on venomous snakes, but he has also published on lizards, turtles, and amphibians. His most significant contributions concern mate competition and winner-loser effects, long-term sperm storage, mating systems, seasonal steroid hormone cycles of male and female pitvipers, and facultative parthenogenesis in snakes.
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He was involved in a long-term study (2001-2015) of the social behavior, ecology and genetics of a population of western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox) in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona.
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Schuett has published 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, 20 peer-reviewed book chapters, and several popular magazine articles. Schuett was the founding editor of the scholarly journal Herpetological Natural History. He co-authored a highly acclaimed zoology laboratory text (1997, 2nd edition 2000), and served as chief editor for a peer-reviewed scholarly book (2002), Biology of the Vipers (Eagle Mountain Publishing). This book has been made available online here. He was chief editor of the peer-reviewed book (2 volumes) titled, Rattlesnakes of Arizona (https://www.ecouniverse.com/product/410/). The first volume is published (summer 2016) and volume 2 is expected in fall 2016.