A few years ago, California teens Prakrit Jain and Harper Forbes came across photos of two unidentified scorpions on iNaturalist. This app allows people to share pictures of wild animals they encounter. The teens set out to identify these unknown species. They soon found both types of scorpion living in the dry, salty lake beds in Southern California where the photos were taken.
To officially identify each species, the pair sought help from Lauren Esposito, an arachnologist who studies spiders and scorpions. Under her guidance, they compared the unknown species with known scorpion specimens. Key differences confirmed that the teens had found two unique species.
In August 2022, the pair’s findings were published in the scientific journal ZooKeys, with the names they’d chosen for the species: Paruroctonus soda and Paruroctonus conclusus. Prakrit, now 18, and Harper, 19, have found about two dozen other yet-to-benamed scorpion species!