Dr. Emily N. Taylor, PhD, is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, where she has been teaching and mentoring students in field-based environmental physiology research for twenty years. She fell in love with snakes as an undergraduate at University of California - Berkeley, where she conducted research on the Baja California Rattlesnake. She next got her PhD in Biological Sciences at Arizona State University studying rattlesnake physiology. In addition to her research and teaching, Emily is co-author of an introductory biology textbook, co-founder of the community science endeavor Project RattleCam, and has recently published two popular science books: California Snakes and How To Find Them, and California Lizards and How To Find Them. Emily lives on the California Central Coast with her menagerie of rescue animals, including a bearded dragon named Aperol Spriz and a bearded husband named Steve.