ABOUT ME


Background Information

My name is Ryan Turnquist.  I live in Fenton (St. Louis suburbs), Missouri, all my life - all 19 years.  As with any reptile enthusiast, I am a “herp kid.”  I love to keep, breed, capture, study, and learn about reptiles.  Don’t let my age fool you, I have conducted scientific research and I hold a seasonal reptile keeper position at the St. Louis Zoo.  I don’t know where my passion for reptile came from because no one in my family really likes reptiles.  Most of the time I had to sneak reptiles into my house.  Lately, my family has managed with my passion because either way I was going to keep reptiles anyway.  I have grown from keeping a cage here and there to having a separate room for my breeding operation, which is small but it gets the job done for the time being.


Timber Rattlesnake Research

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Wayne Drda, Cheryl Apperson & Ryan Turnquist

When I was in high school I was able to participate and conduct scientific research on timber rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus).  I joined the Timber Rattlesnake Research Project under Dr. Wayne Drda and Corey Anderson.  I was able to track these snakes in their natural habitat for two summers.  I learned from the great Wayne Drda, who I owe much of my knowledge and success to.  The first summer was a big learning experience.  I learned how to track, process, and capture timber rattlesnakes as well as their natural history.  Most research and knowledge on timber rattlesnakes comes from the northeast but what we found is that it is a different story in the Midwest due to mostly the longer active season because of the different climate.

 

For the second summer, I continued to track timber rattlesnakes as well as diverge and conduct my own research on edge effects.  What I was trying to discover was if timber rattlesnakes non-randomly prefer edge habitat.  Edge habitat is the zone of transition from one habitat to another such as a field to forest edge or a road cut through the woods.  However, before I could determine this I had to determine the width of the edge quantitatively, so I, with the help of Wayne Drda, measured the change in temperature across the edge because from our tracking experience we observed timber rattlesnakes using the edge for mostly thermoregulation.  Therefore, the width of the edge was determined by the leveling out of the temperatures.  After we determined the width of the edges, we used the GPS locations of twelve timber rattlesnakes from one active season to determine if there was a higher density of locations in the edge habitat rather than non-edge habitat.  Overall, eleven of the twelve snakes preferred the edge habitat, which from our observations correlates with shedding, digestion, and development of young. 

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Tracking in the prairie

 


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Ambush Behavior

I entered my research into a couple science contests and I did very well.  I first entered my research into the Missouri Junior Science Symposium and I placed first in my category and in the top six in Missouri, which granted me a free trip to Nationals in San Diego, California.  The second competition I entered was the Greater St. Louis Science Fair and I placed in the top two, which allowed me to compete at the International Science Fair in Phoenix, Arizona.  The International Science Fair was quite an experience because there were a total of about 1400 competitors from 41 different countries around the world. 

I placed fourth in the Zoology category but just placing is huge honor.  I was featured in three articles in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the first about placing in the St. Louis Science Fair, the second about placing in the International Science Fair and third about the overall timber rattlesnake study.  Many newspapers all over the United States picked up the article over the whole study so you might have read it.  Click here to read the article. If you would like to learn more about timber rattlesnakes, then e-mail me.


St. Louis Zoo

Through my research, I was able to get the seasonal reptile position at the St. Louis Zoo.  If you have never been the St. Louis Zoo, I highly recommend going because the reptile selection there is vast and diverse.  I think the St. Louis Zoo is one of the best in the nation.  Over the past summer working in the Herpetarium, I learned a lot from some of the best guys in the business.  I also was able to design a few display enclosures for them.  A few animals in my care over the summer were green anacondas, shingle-backed skinks, giant tortoises, fly river turtles, and Vietnamese long-nosed snakes, to name just a few.  I will be returning to the position next summer.


Crested Geckos

My first exposure to crested geckos was the April 1998 issue of Reptiles magazine.  I was twelve years old at the time and I thought they were the coolest geckos ever.  As with any child’s obsession, my love of crested geckos was quickly forgotten.  A few years later, after keeping many reptiles recreationally, I decided to choose a species that I wanted to breed.  I came across crested geckos again and decided it was the perfect species to work with.  I purchased my first four juvenile crested geckos in March of 2002, as a freshman in high school.  Over the past four years, I have increased my numbers by quite a bit.  I pride myself that I have spent the vast majority of the cost needed to take care of these animals and sole care is my responsibility.    


Future Plans

I am currently a freshman at Saint Louis University and this spring I, as well as Dr. Wayne Drda, Dr. Bob Aldridge, and Jeff Ettling, will be starting a new research project that will involve both captive and field work.  The captive work will involve copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix), focusing on snake pheromones, female attractiveness, male combat behavior and a few other aspects as well.  The fieldwork will involve tracking both copperheads and timber rattlesnakes, focusing on niche selection and overall natural history of both species in the Midwest.

For my future breeding plans, I hope to keep producing more crested geckos and focus on produce offspring of the highest quality.  I would like to expand my number of breeders, focusing on the highest quality color morphs.  Also, I like to move into other reptile species but I prefer not to keep the common reptiles, like corn snakes, ball pythons, leopard geckos or bearded dragons.  Not that I have anything against them, but I want something unique.