• Ph.D. in Ecology, Utah State University
• M.S. in Biological Science, Eastern Illinois University
• B.S. in Ecology, University of Georgia

• Herpetology
• Wildlife

I am interested in ecological questions at the intersection of population, community, and ecosystem ecology. My research extends into physiology, behavior, conservation, human-wildlife interactions, citizen science, and recently into global public health and machine learning/artificial intelligence. I work mainly on snakes although I have also worked on birds, lizards, amphibians, and invertebrates.
My research to date has involved six major integrated themes.

1. Venomous snakebite & the human-animal-ecosystem interface
2. Stable isotopes and food webs, from producers to top-level consumers
3. Ecophysiological effects of urbanization on wildlife life-history trade-offs
4. Predator & anti-predator behavior
5. Population and community ecology, with an emphasis on imperfect detection of cryptic species
6. Global biodiversity, distribution, ecology, and modern natural history of snakes

• BSC1010C General Biology I
• PDB3043C General Ecology
• BSC 4910C Senior Research

Dr. Durso has published 35 peer-reviewed scientific articles in journals such as Biological Conservation, Canadian Journal of Zoology, Conservation Physiology, Diversity & Distributions, Ethology, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, Functional Ecology, Global Ecology and Biogeography, Heredity, Herpetologica, Journal of Experimental Zoology, Journal of Herpetology, Journal of Zoology, Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Royal Society Open Science, Toxicon X, Wetlands, and Zoology. He has co-authored two book chapters, and written three book reviews and over 70 natural history and geographic distribution notes.

For more detail see Dr. Durso's Google Scholar profile.

Dr. Durso is a regular at the annual Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists & Herpetologists and at the less frequent World Congress of Herpetology, Snake Ecology Group, and Biology of the Vipers conferences. He has also presented at the International Herpetological Symposium, the Georgia Science Teachers Association Conference, the Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference, and at the annual meetings of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Herpetologie und Terrarienkunde, Southeast and North Carolina Partners in Amphibian & Reptile Conservation, and the North Carolina Herpetological Society. He has presented work on computer vision and biodiversity at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), AI for Good, and LifeCLEF. He has been a guest speaker for Archbold Biological Station, the Utah State University Science Unwrapped series, the Herpetological Association of Africa, and the Stockholm Herpetological Society. He gave a FGCU Whitaker Center STEMinar in 2020 and his students regularly present at the FGCU Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Students Dr. Durso has mentored have received FGCU and Utah State University Undergraduate Scholarly Awards. Dr. Durso received a Herpetologists' League E.E. Williams Research Grant in 2013 and a North Carolina Herpetological Society Research Grant in 2009, as well as research support from Eastern Illinois University and Utah State University.
2023. NSF BRC-BIO: Optimizing Snake Identification by Understanding the Interplay of Computer Vision, Crowdsourcing, and Expert Verification – Award #2313356 - $454,184