Luke Linhoff

Luke Linhoff is on a mission to save amphibians.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He worked as zookeeper, an aquarium keeper and with various endangered wildlife reintroduction programs before enrolling at FIU to pursue a doctorate degree.

As a Ph.D. student, Luke worked in Maureen Donnelly’s Herpetology Lab examining the impacts of the pet trade on amphibians and how captive animals, including frogs and toads, can help reach conservation goals.

Luke also studied the reintroduction of the Wyoming toad, an animal on the on the brink of extinction. He studied the Wyoming toad’s behavior, habitat and movement patterns to inform how to raise them in captivity and effectively release them back to the wild. Luke’s efforts to restore their population alongside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were profiled by National Geographic.

Luke’s work has been recognized by the American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology, a society dedicated to the study and conservation of fish, amphibians and reptiles. He was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, earning numerous fellowships and awards totaling more than $150,000 in research funding.

Luke is earning a Ph.D. in biology from FIU. He is looking to work as a postdoctoral researcher, at a zoo or with a nonprofit organization. Luke wants to dedicate his career to combating one of the planet’s most pressing conservation problems – preventing the extinction of the world’s rarest animals.

By Evelyn S. Gonzalez
Account Manager, College of Arts, Sciences & Education