High School Student Discovers Two New-to-Science Scorpion Species, Called Them ‘Alkali Sink Specialists’

The newly discovered Paruroctonus soda and Paruroctonus conclusus are playa scorpions, meaning they can only be found around playas or dry lake beds in the deserts of Central and Southern California.

According to a Phys.org report, California now has two new scorpions on its list of species, and that's because of the initiatives of two "knee-eyed" high-school students from the Bay Area and the California Academy of Sciences.

Known for being avid users on the community science platform iNaturalist, Harper Forbes and Praktis Jain discovered the new-to-science scorpions while trawling the thousands of observations other users in the state uploaded.

Unidentified Scorpion Species

For conservation managers, scientists, and the growing communities of wildlife observers on such platforms, these newly observed species offer better insight into the biodiversity of California and the places most in need of protection, a cornerstone of the Academy's Thriving California Initiative.

The budding naturalists collaborated with Curator of Arachnology Lauren Esposito, Ph.D., to officially describe the species in a study published recently in ZooKeys.

In 2019, the two students came across an unidentified scorpion species on iNaturalist observed close to Koehn Lake, a temporary lake in the Mojave Desert, that had stayed unidentified since it was uploaded six years ago.

Describing the discovery, Jain said they were unsure what they were looking at. Over the next couple of years, they examined scorpions in the genus Paruroctonus and discovered they often evolve to "live in alkali playas like Koehh Lake.

Paruroctonus Species Discovered

When they returned to that preliminary observation, the two realized they were looking at an unidentified Paruroctonus species.

Serendipitously, another unidentified scorpion species discovered in San Luis Obispo County was uploaded to iNaturalist shortly after they were found in May 2021.

With a few years of arachnid studies under their belts, Forbes and Jain knew immediately that it was a new scorpion species. Immediately, they contacted Esposito for assistance, leading to two new-to-science scorpions- the P. soda and the P. conclusus, and published a study in which Forbes and Jain were the first authors.

Esposito aid, Harper and Prakrit went through all the steps to formally describe a species, sampling the populations and comparing them with the present specimens in their collection.

He added, that there's a lot of work involved, although they are remarkably passionate about this study. It is inspiring to see that their hobby is one "that advances biodiversity science," continued Esposito.

Alkali Sink Specialists

Both the two new species are called "alkali sink specialists." This means that they have adapted to the alkaline basins, which are dry, salty playas with high pH soils, in which they evolved.

Each species has quite a limited range and can only be found in playas where they were first spotted, specifically Soda Lake and Koehn Lake, a similar Bioengineer.org report said.

During their summer break, the two high school students visited the said lakes to collect samples of each new species. After they scouted the alkali flats during the daytime for habitats most appropriate for playa scorpions, they set out with their forceps and vials at dusk, and these desert dwellers are mainly active during the night.

Fortunately, most scorpions fluoresce beneath ultraviolet light, and thus the researchers utilized blacklights to scour the open playas while they kept an eye for their glowing subjects.

The team looked for typical hiding places of the scorpions, peering into cracks in the hard clay soil and combing through common alkaline sink plants such as iodine bush or Allenrolfea occidentalis, and bush seepweed or Suaeda nigra.

At the end of every trip, they successfully collected a sample size of both males and females adequate for the study.

Related information about discovering new scorpion species is shown on Seeker's YouTube video below:

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