{"id":435225,"date":"2026-08-17T12:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T12:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/435225\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T12:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T12:54:12","slug":"you-see-one-snake-and-it-makes-it-worth-it-why-sdsu-students-are-tracking-down-rattlesnakes-in-mission-trails-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/435225\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You see one snake, and it makes it worth it\u2019: Why SDSU students are tracking down rattlesnakes in Mission Trails \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

The air is cool as a group of San Diego State University\u00a0students crouch beneath branches and push through brush along the San Diego River, in pursuit of a red diamond rattlesnake named Ruby.<\/p>\n

Like many red diamonds, Ruby isn\u2019t easy to find. She blends easily into the dark, leaf-covered ground near the river in Mission Trails Regional Park. Unless she\u2019s moving, there\u2019s a chance the students could walk right past her.<\/p>\n

But they want to get eyes on the snake to size up her physical condition, location and the air\u2019s temperature \u2014 all part of their larger study to learn how red diamonds are affected by disturbances like hikers and construction.<\/p>\n

The team is about ready to give up when a San Diego Union-Tribune photographer spots Ruby just a few feet away, coiled in a hunting position and barely noticeable with her camouflage.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see one snake, and it makes it worth it,\u201d says master\u2019s student Vincent Marcantonio, grinning.<\/p>\n

Marcantonio is leading the red diamond rattlesnake study for SDSU\u2019s Clark Lab, which researches animal behavior and conservation.<\/p>\n

His work, done in partnership with the San Diego Zoo, aims to shed light on how the snakes respond to human factors, especially as their coastal sage scrub habitat is threatened by human interference.<\/p>\n

Red diamond rattlesnakes are considered a species of special concern<\/a> by California\u2019s Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Marcantonio hopes his research can help set conservation strategies for them in increasingly urban environments.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the second year of a two-year project. Earlier this spring, Marcantonio caught 10 red diamond rattlesnakes and brought them back to the lab at SDSU. There, each got a sensor\u00a0called an accelerometer surgically implanted, along with a small radio, before they were sent back out to their habitat in Mission Trails.<\/p>\n

Several times a week, Marcantonio and his team come out to check on them \u2014 which is what they were doing when they saw Ruby on Thursday. They monitor the snakes using an advanced telemetry system, which includes a type of radio antenna that picks up a snake\u2019s frequency via signals from its embedded radio.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t always see the snake. But they can at least determine its\u00a0general location and whether it moved since their last visit.<\/p>\n

Later this fall, they will capture the snakes once again to remove the accelerometers, which have all the while been collecting data on the snakes\u2019 movement. This will help the researchers understand the snakes\u2019 behaviors\u00a0in a place heavily trafficked by people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had snakes that moved miles, and I\u2019ve had snakes that have moved feet,\u201d Marcantonio\u00a0said. \u201cIt\u2019s dependent on the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

His team may repeat the process over the winter, if they find and capture more snakes, to track them in their dens.<\/p>\n

Once completed, Marcantonio\u2019s findings from Mission Trails \u2014 with its climbers, hikers, runners, cyclists, cars and an ongoing\u00a0sewer pipeline project<\/a> \u2014 will be compared to a study done a few years ago that tracked red diamond rattlesnakes near the San Diego Zoo Safari Park on land that is largely untouched by people.<\/p>\n

For now, Marcantonio is still getting to know the snakes he\u2019s tracking. There\u2019s Pigpen \u2014 so named for relieving himself one too many times in his enclosure at the SDSU lab. Then there are Jasper, Beatrice, Matilda, Mary and Wil, named after former Padres\u2019 player Wil Myers. He\u2019s a little worried about two of the females, including Beatrice, who has looked a bit thin lately.<\/p>\n

Marcantonio\u2019s love of snakes started when he was a kid; he\u2019d go\u00a0the San Diego Zoo each week\u00a0and couldn\u2019t be pulled away from the reptiles exhibit.<\/p>\n

He got his first pet snake at 11 \u2014 a corn snake he named Snickers.\u00a0Today,\u00a0at 25, he has 12 \u2014 including Snickers, a couple California king snakes, a gopher snake and a garter snake, a Colombia boa constrictor and a couple ball pythons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just found them fascinating, and I didn\u2019t really understand why people didn\u2019t like them,\u201d he says of his interest in researching them. \u201cSo I kind of wanted to understand them a little bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harshita Vallabhaneni, another student in the Clark Lab, feels similarly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really easy to demonize them,\u201d she said. \u201cI just like being in a position where I\u2019m able to educate people and come up with better conservation management strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vallabhaneni is helping Marcantonio with his research in Mission Trails \u2014 but she\u2019s also working on her own master\u2019s project near the Safari Park to assess how relocation affects red diamond rattlesnakes.<\/p>\n

So far, she\u2019s found that most relocated snakes try to find their way back to\u00a0where they were captured.<\/p>\n

Understanding how snakes respond to human interaction and interference is important because they are so abundant in public spaces, says Rulon Clark, the biology professor who runs the SDSU Clark Lab.<\/p>\n

Hikers and cyclists have a good chance of encountering a rattlesnake on the trails, so it\u2019s important to understand how the animals serve as a link in the ecosystem, Clark says. He hopes that education can turn fear of snakes into respect and interest.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s enjoyed seeing how working in the lab can shift his students\u2019 career goals or encourage them to\u00a0incorporate this research\u00a0into their future.<\/p>\n

Marcantonio hopes to work at the San Diego Zoo after he graduates with his master\u2019s next year. But if he could keep tracking rattlesnakes, that wouldn\u2019t be too bad, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would do this for the rest of my life,\u201d Marcantonio said. \u201cThis is so cool.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The air is cool as a group of San Diego State University\u00a0students crouch beneath branches and push through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[23,100,74,76,75,645,1696],"class_list":["post-435225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-science","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}