Inaturalist in the news - Bay Area high school students describe two new scorpion species with Academy researcher

Bay Area high school students describe two new scorpion species with Academy researcher

Identified on the community science platform iNaturalist, the species add to California’s rich biodiversity

California now has two new scorpions on its list of species, thanks to the efforts of two keen-eyed high school students from the Bay Area and the California Academy of Sciences. Harper Forbes and Prakrit Jain, avid users on the community science platform iNaturalist, discovered the new-to-science scorpions while trawling the thousands of observations uploaded by other users in the state

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So one important lesson is don’t depair if your records remain unidentified, there are keen naturalists “trawling” inaturalist to find new species and one might just get lucky,

To quote

that had remained unidentified since it was uploaded six years earlier.

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I first met Prakrit back in 2015 or so and Ken-ichi and I ran into him while tidepooling last year. Amazing to see him grow up and get so into scorpions. Also awesome that Dr. Esposito helped the two young men with this paper.

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Many weeks later this news reaches the Guardian -
‘These kids can find anything’: California teens identify two new scorpion species

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