Both the specific and common names of this species honor Paul-Émile Botta, a naturalist and archaeologist who collected mammals in California in 1827 and 1828.

[2] Botta's pocket gophers are found from California east to Texas, and from Utah and southern Colorado south to Mexico.

Within this geographical area, they inhabit a range of habitats, including woodlands, chaparral, scrubland, and agricultural land, being limited only by rocky terrain, barren deserts, and major rivers.

The distribution of the type localities of these subspecies is as follows:[2] Botta's pocket gopher is strictly herbivorous, feeding on a variety of plant matter.

Burrowing can be extremely energetically demanding requiring between 360 and 3,400 times as much energy as moving across the surface, depending on soil density.

Due to the high cost of burrowing, Botta's pocket gopher is good at conserving energy by having a low basal metabolic rate and thermal conductance.

Digging by Botta's pocket gophers is estimated to aerate the soil to a depth of about 20 cm (7.9 in),[2] and to be responsible for the creation of Mima mounds up to 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in height.

They are able to tolerate such a wide range of soils in part because they dig primarily with their teeth, which are larger and with a thicker layer of enamel than in claw-digging gophers.

On the surface, the burrows are marked by fan-shaped mounds of excavated soil, with the actual entrance usually kept filled in for protection.

The local habitat also affects the age at which females begin breeding, with nearly half doing so in their first year in agricultural land, but none at all in desert scrub.