Snake Evolution and Biogeography
38 Tram Rd
PO Box 202
Wacissa FL 32361
This short video explains the goals and mission of SEB at inception:
Snake Evolution and Biogeography was founded in 2021 with the mission to advance the public understanding of snake natural history through education and facilitate ongoing research by increasing the volume of materials being deposited in public natural history collections.
SEB offers quick, reliable crowd-sourced IDs by a team of "Reliable Responders" - professionally mentored avocational herpetologists. Paired with a bot, easy submission on a major website allows us to reach those most in need of natural history information. In the 2021-2022 year we solved ~2500 snake IDs a year, growing to nearly 9000 a year in 2022-2023. Today we ID on average 300 snakes a day and from 2024-2025 solved nearly 16,000 requests. In April 2025 alone at the begining of the spring season we exposed 225,000 unique visitors to accurate, postive information about snakes. IDs and information are facilitated by a natural history "bot" - a python program that responds to users' key commands and arms them with accurate, citable information about snakes. Check it out at www.reddit.com/r/whatsthissnake
The heart of our community organization is our Discord server, linked HERE. There you can introduce yourself and get involved. Twice a year we gather for professional development courses where we catch snakes and learn how to take tissue and prepare voucher specimens from ones we find dead, to deposit n publicly held collections for use in research.
The specific purposes of Snake Evolution and Biogeography are:
To provide data-driven educational materials on snake natural history, diversity and distribution utilizing modern technology across multiple platforms.
To offer training, education and equipment to citizen scientists to prepare, store and ship genetic samples and voucher specimens for permanent deposition in public collections.
To identify and close gaps in depauperate sampling areas and elucidate modern range edges in the face of biodiversity loss and climate change.
To foster a conservation ethic towards snakes as important native wildlife.
WHO WE ARE:
Executive Director:
Alexander D. McKelvy
Alex McKelvy set this whole thing up - he has a passion for facilitationg your participation in the scientific process. Trained in ecology, evolution and behavior as a historical biogeographer and evolutionary biologist, he is interested in molecular phylogeography and historical biogeography of snakes, but Dr. Steven Brule is his greatest inspiration. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you think we can help you in any way with your molecular phylogeography or other snake research project.
Google Scholar Link
Secretary:
Christian Diederich
Christian Diederich is a fancy big city yankee lawyer transitioning to snake sciencer. Since 2021 he has been instrumental in the development of SEB and the organization of our twice yearly workshops.
Scientific Advisor:
Edward A. Myers
Ed Myers is a brilliant young researcher and mentor who is crazy about molecular phyloegeography of snakes. After his first tattoo he realized he could never enter heaven and thusly must appeal to the devil by writing about snakes - the rest is history. His comparative phylogeography work tests, and writing expertly makes sense of, computational methods and real world historical processes. Ed currently works for California Academy of Sciences and serves as a scientific advisor and mentor here to Snake Evolution and Biogeography.
Website
Google Scholar Link
Director of Outreach:
Chris Rezendes
Chris can tell you anything you want to know about gartersnakes and more you don't. Chris is a great mentor to people interested in learning about snakes and willing to put in the time to do it right. He writes and coordinates volunteer efforts for SEB species accounts and taxonomy updates, and coordinates many aspects of Snake ID moderation. Thanks to his efforts we have original species accounts for nearly all North American snakes and the majority of commonly encountered species worldwide.
2025 SEB Field Science Scholar:
Bella Gonzalez
Bella is an amazing young scientist moving from UF and the Florida Musuem into the PhD program at UT Austin. An amazing naturalist, Bella is working for SEB to assemble and curate a dataset on North American snake phylogeography to help us track tissue deposition and use over time. She teaches musuem science techniques like taking tissue from roadkills and preserving vouchers on SEB workshps.
Officer:
Alex Figueroa
Afigs, "Flex" Figueroa, lives in Singapore and works as ICZN secretariat. Alex helped set up SEB and is a brilliant and patient researcher. Alex is interested in the evolution of arboreality in snakes and has been working to modernize and update the herpetofaunal inventories of Singapore.
Google Scholar Link
