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(Regina)  Welcome to Spark Science where we explore stories of human curiosity.  I’m your host Regina Barber DeGraaff, astrophysicist, pop culture enthusiast, and this is our second SACNAS show of this season.  SACNAS stands for the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science and the annual convention is the largest convention of scientists of color in the nation.  Spark Science attends every year and we had the honor of interviewing key note speakers such as Dr. Lauren Espocito.  She’s a scientist who is one of only a dozen who studies scorpions. 

 

Let’s learn about these amazing creators and about the engaging researcher who studies them. 

 

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(Dr. Espocito)  Hello, I’m Dr. Lauren Esposito and I’m the curator of arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences. 

 

(Regina)  Tell me, well, first of all, you did a speech talk at lunch here at SACNAS 2018.   It was amazing.  There were people crying and it was . . . 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  I was not one of those, I just want to say. 

 

(Regina)  No.  I said people.  I didn’t say you.  [Laughing.] 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  That was my biggest fear of today, that I would get up and just start bawling on stage.  I did actually have like, one tear in my eye, but, I really powered through.  I choked it down. 

 

(Regina)  You go around the world finding scorpions and like pet them. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, yeah. 

 

(Regina)  Take pictures with them. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yes, I pet them and take pictures of them.  That’s my primary objective in doing research in the world. 

 

(Regina)  Social media. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, social media and petting scorpions because they love that.  It’s like their favorite thing. 

 

(Regina)  Let’s talk about your scorpions first and then we’ll talk about why people got emotional when you were on stage later. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  That’s much more comfortable.  So my scorpions, well, I’m an arachnologist and I primarily study scorpions.  Um, there’s about 12 people worldwide that are professional scorpion biologists. 

 

(Regina)  12 people? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, they’re not that many scorpion biologists but we’re really in the midst of an era of, we’re like in the golden age of scorpion research, because, 100 years ago, there was about 285 species of scorpions known to science and now in the last 100 years we’ve increased that number by a whole order of magnitude and so we’re at, something like, 2400. 

 

(Regina)  What? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  And, there’s dozens of new species discovered every year.  When I say golden age it sounds silly but we really are in a golden age of scorpion discovery where we are discovering new species all the time. 

 

(Regina)  So now that’s literally what you do, you go around the world and you are discovering these different species. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, yeah, that’s a lot of my work and exploratory work and often times it’s targeted.  I can look at a map and on that map know where all the scorpions that we’ve discovered so far are and when here’s holes in that map like there’s no scorpion discovered from there or documented from a place.  Like, you have a pretty good idea that you’re going to go there and find something new or at a minimum you will go there and provide new information about what lives on Earth and where. 

 

(Regina)  Right.  There is so awesome!  I know nothing, like, especially about anything biology related.  Like, that’s my arm bone.  Astrophysicist.  

 

(Dr. Espocito)  I studied invertebrates. 

 

(Regina)  [Laughing.] 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Arm bone, finger bone . . . 

 

(Regina)  Tail bone.  Tell me about like, if you’re looking at this map and you’re like, scorpions would like this kind of environment, or are there different kinds of scorpions that like different parts of the world? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Well, scorpions were the first multicellular predator to invade land so their ancestors were aquatic, they lived in the ocean.  They were these big fish eating, two meter long, scary monsters.  Then they invaded terrestrial environments.  They’re basic architecture has been preserved.  Over the last 450 million years, the basic architecture of a scorpion is still the same as it was 450 million years ago. 

 

(Regina)  It’s just not two meters. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  It’s just not two meters.  There like max, you know . . . 

 

(Regina)  A foot? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  A hand length. 

 

(Regina)  Alright.  The bigger they are the less deadly they are?  Is that true? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  That’s such a myth.  It’s a really common misconception but . . . 

 

(Regina)  Yes, tell me. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  I think it comes from, if you think about where you would imagine a scorpion, it’s the desert.  People think scorpion and they think desert like Arizona, there’s scorpions there in Arizona.  That’s absolutely true, there are scorpions in Arizona and in Arizona, the scorpions you most commonly see are big hairy scorpions literally called, Giant Harry Scorpions, or Desert Area Scorpions. 

 

(Regina)  I like accurate names. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Then there are little scorpions, those are the other ones you would see.  Those little ones are of, in Arizona, of the two kinds of scorpions that you are most likely to see, the littler ones are more dangerous. 

 

(Regina)  OK. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  That doesn’t hold true for everywhere in the world for any stretch of the imagination.  Actually scorpions are found in every ecosystem on Earth other than . . .

 

(Regina)  Like rain forests and everything. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, and then like arctic and Antarctic, they don’t like permanent freezing.  If the earth stays frozen for most of the year, they’re probably not there.  But, everywhere else they are so they can be places where it snows.  Like, you can find scorpions in the Andes, in the Alps, you find scorpions in the rain forests, like, imagine a habitat and they’re there, I’m 100% sure.  Like Texas, California . . . 

 

(Regina)  Is this why it’s a golden age, because of this misconception that it’s only going to be desert-ey places so they weren’t looked for outside of those desert-ey places? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  No.  Actually we’ve known that scorpions live worldwide for a long, long time.  I would say the number one factor being the golden age of scorpion discovery is that in the 1970s, late 60s early 70s, a new technology was discovered which was black lights.  You know, like party black lights. 

 

But, in the 70s it was discovered that scorpions fluoresce under ultraviolet light and so that enables researchers to going from walking around during the day flipping over logs and rocks and looking in little nooks and crannies and being lucky to find a scorpion from after looking all day, to being able to go out at night when these nocturnal creators are active and spot them from two meters away.  It really changed, it was like a game changer. 

 

(Regina)  Black lights were being used everywhere right?  That’s when it was accidentally, I’m sure . . . 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  That was like the hay day of black light. 

 

(Regina)  Exactly. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)   I actually don’t know the story and maybe one day I will have enough time to research it, but, I like to imagine some hippies out in the desert having a party.  

 

(Regina)  Out of their van.  

 

(Dr. Espocito)  But in all realty, around that time was when people started taking out fluorescent UV bulbs, like the tube light bulbs, they’d hook it up to a car battery and carry that car battery over their shoulder to do rock hounding.  People were out looking for precious minerals and gems. 

 

(Regina)  That makes sense. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Like back when rock hounding was still legal, you could still do it on public lands. 

 

(Regina)  I’ve never heard that term. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Rock hounding?  Yeah. 

 

(Regina)  I’m friends with geologists.  I should know.  So, tons of scorpions and because you know that they’re basically everywhere, you’re looking at the map and you’re like, “If there’s this void, then there’s probably something in there, or there’s something that is making it so no scorpions are there and that would be something else to research.”

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah.  Well, there’s one place without any scorpions and that’s New Zealand, but I don’t go there because that’s boring. 

 

(Regina)  Hmm.  What’s your favorite scorpion like, habitat, place to go trekking? 

 

 (Dr. Espocito)  Well, my jam is really the Neo-tropics.  That’s like tropical areas in the Caribbean, Central America, South America.  That’s like my jam.  I love it.  I love being hot and sweaty and like, walking around in mud for 16 hours a day. 

 

(Regina)  What’s the percentage of scorpions that are dangerous?  You’re going out and you’re hunting these down.  When are you sacred, when are you not sacred? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  All scorpions have venom.  That’s a unifying future for scorpions.  They all have a venom gland at the end of their tail and inside that venom gland is, are cells that produce venom peptides.  But, one single scorpion, an individual, could have a cocktail in their venom gland of 200 unique compounds. 

 

Those compounds range from antimicrobials to things that act with a high degree of specificity on the nervous system.  Basically what they do is, they go in the specificity is animal specific.  So, a neurotoxin that works on a mammal nervous system isn’t going to work on an insect nervous system. 

 

(Regina)  That’s why they have a whole bunch.  

 

(Dr. Espocito)  That’s why they have a whole bunch.  Because, scorpions have to evade predators which are mostly mammals and at the same time they have to be able to eat their prey which are mainly invertebrates, insects.  So, in this cocktail, there’s two major groups of scorpions.  The scorpions that have as part of this cocktail, neurotoxins that act on mammals and those are the ones that are not necessarily dangerous but will cause pain. 

 

With these neuropeptides, what they’re doing is they’re going in and they’re interfering with the way your nervous transmit signals to one another and they’re either telling your nervous to talk to one another and send a message to your brain that your body’s experiencing extreme pain when it’s not, or they block those signals from transmitting to one another, which may cause light paralysis.  The primary one is the first one.  If you’re trying to get away from a predator the best way is to like, make it, like, make it feel like it’s on fire and it stops paying attention to where you’re going. 

 

(Regina)  Right.  You district it with pain. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, district it with extreme pain.  So, all the scorpions that fall into that category of having these pain causing neurotoxins are the ones that you should be concerned about, and it’s also the ones where the 25 species that could kill an adult human belong to.  It’s a category of scorpions that they belong to.   It’s a family called Buthidae. 

 

(Regina)  OK.  Booth city. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Buthidae.  Buthidae. 

 

(Regina)  [Laughing.]  Sorry. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  You don’t want to be in Booth City. 

 

(Regina)  You don’t want to be in Booth City.  We should write a folk song about that. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Alright.  Sounds good.  Big hairy scorpions are alright. 

 

(Regina)  They’re cool. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  They don’t have those neurotoxins. 

 

(Regina)  They seem cool. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  But you know, at the end of the day they still have a giant stinger and they’re going to jab it into you and it’s going to hurt.  It’s the same, like, how we get pricked by a rose bush. 

 

(Regina)  Right. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  It hurts.  When foreign objects get stabbed into your body it hurts. 

 

(Regina)  So, I like to talk about pop culture a lot, like TV and movies. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Like the band Scorpions?

 

(Regina)  No [laughing.]  I’m talking about like, TV and movies representing entomologists. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  It’s like Arachnophobia. 

 

(Regina)  There’s arachnophobia. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Those arachnologists were terrible. 

 

>> Every so often in a little town somewhere, there is a health scare. 

 

>> There’s a rumor going around that some kind of spider might have killed Sam Metcalf. 

 

>> Doubtful. 

 

>> Spiders make convenient culprits. 

 

>> [Cricket sound.] 

 

>> I think one of your Venezuelan spiders hitched a ride here. 

 

>> There may be some spiders around here that are very dangerous. 

 

>> Dad, chill out. 

 

>> Just run. 

 

>> They spread out from an essential nest in a web like pattern and dominate the entire area. 

 

>> [Screaming.] 

 

>> When that happens, this town is dead. 

 

>> Better [inaudible] my private stack. 

 

>> [Blow torch sound.] 

 

>> [Ominous music.] 

 

>> Arachnophobia, 8 legs, 2 fangs, and an attitude.  

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Unleashing monster fires on the population. 

 

(Regina)  They didn’t do their job well. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  No. 

 

(Regina)  They didn’t adhere to the code. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  No, not at all.  Like, first rule of code is don’t let the animals out. 

 

(Regina)  Right. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Which I have to admit, I’m guilty of having done on occasion. 

 

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(Regina)  Spark Science will be back with more from the SACNAS convention.  The number one convention with a focus on inclusion and STEM. 

 

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(Regina)  Welcome back to Spark Science.  This is our second SACNAS show of this season.  SACNAS stands for the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.  The annual convention is the largest gathering of scientists of color in the nation. 

 

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(Regina)  The first time I ever knew what an entomologist was, because again, I’m a physicist, not all scientists know all of the other sciences.  We’re not all Doc Brown.  We’re not all inventors. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Speak for yourself. 

 

(Regina)  [Laughing.] 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  I know all the sciences. 

 

(Regina)  Do you? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  No.  I don’t know any. 

 

(Regina)  I’m sorry Dr. Espocito knows all the sciences and the scientists.  So, I’m watching Backyardigans, which you have kids, you might know of the show. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  I know of Backyardigans, I can’t confess I’ve ever watched a single episode. 

 

(Regina)  OK I’ve watch every episode because my daughter was very into it.  There’s one that had classical music but it was set in the wild-west.  It was about catching a golden butterfly.  In this song he sings, “Entomology is what I do.”  I remember thinking Dory, my four year old, knowing what entomology was, because he was studying these, you know, these insects and bugs and stuff.  I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s what that is.”  So like, how is your science portrayed in pop culture that you agree with, you don’t agree with, just isn’t there, etc?  Have you thought about this?  Other than arachnophobia. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Well I wouldn’t say that I’m not an entomologist.  My current position is in an entomology department so I’m sort of like a token entomologist.  Like, entomology is technically just things with six legs but, I guess they’ll let a couple extra in from time to time because they hired me so, I guess that works.  I think, in pop culture, most of the time entomologists are portrayed as some real big dorks that are like, into bugs and carry around a butterfly net and wear like, a funky hat and probably a vest. 

 

(Regina)  They’re always wearing vests. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Like, those things are all true.  Entomologists do wear vests, and a funky hat, and carry around a butterfly net, so, it’s accurate.  But at the same time I feel like it’s also, you know, they’re usually like a bumbling dorky person who’s socially inept and usually it’s a dude, like a white dude, I’d say most of the time. 

 

(Regina)  In this show it was a penguin and his name is Pablo so they tried. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Alright.  Penguins are like, mixed. 

 

(Regina)  Yeah.  We have no idea. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  They are ethnically ambiguous. 

 

(Regina)  Yeah.  All we know is his name is Pablo.  So, shout out to whoever else watches Backyardigans.  I still watch it every once in a while. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  On your own?  Not with your daughter? 

 

(Regina)  Sometimes.  I’m like, “Ah yeah, this is nice, I remember this episode.”  So, I want to take us to the talk you did today at SACNAS as a scientist who is part of the queer community. You wanted to be able for other people to know that you and others exist.  That’s what I got. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Absolutely.  In some ways it was slightly selfish because I have been working in STEM for a long time.  I’ve been a professional scientist for several years at this point.  I don’t know at what point you call yourself a professional scientist but like, I got my PhD 6 years ago, 7 years ago.  I got my PhD 7 years ago. 

 

(Regina)  We’re like twins.  Me too. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  So like, I feel like I’ve been a professional scientist for 7 years, maybe more.  In spite of that, I basically haven’t known any other queer scientists in my career.  Like a handful of acquaintances but nobody working in my discipline.  Definitely no scorpion biologists hands down. 

 

(Regina)  Because there’s only 12 of them. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah there are only 12 of us.  So statistically 10% of the population is LGBTQ. 

 

(Regina)  So like, you’re it? 

 

(Dr. Espocito) 12 is like, I’m it.  Unless we get 20 maybe.  Then we’ll have another. 

 

(Regina)  Right. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, so I felt isolated.  I work at the California Academy of Sciences which is in San Francisco which is super gay.  Hella gay as they would say in the Bay Area. 

 

(Regina)  They’re vernacular.  

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah.  And yet, we have a very diverse group of employees over all but among the research staff, the research facility, I’m the only queer researcher.  I mean, I won’t even say that.  I’m the only queer PI, the only queer head of a lab.  There’s definitely some queer students but, the visibility at the higher level, like the visibility from the senior level and up, among the researchers, is none.  It’s me.  That feels isolating too.  I feel isolated in my discipline.  I feel isolated in my place of employment although I have amazing, I will say I have amazing, amazing allies. 

 

(Regina)  In support. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  In support.  Hands down.  I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else and be the only one.  [Laughing.] 

 

(Regina)  So you’re like, “If I can’t feel totally at home in myself and not isolated in this wonderful environment, then what are other people feeling?” 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, exactly.  Like, I can’t be the only one.  You know, I’ll talk a little bit about, maybe, the inspiration for coming up with the visibility campaign which is like in, February, February, I can’t remember what month now.  Maybe it’s March, was Women’s Month.  Our institution, the California Academy of Sciences, our research division decided to put on a women in science event. 

 

We invited all of these woman scientists, we reached out to the local 500 woman scientists and I felt like the response was so overwhelming and so positive and such a community building exercise and people were just happy to be celebrated for being woman in science.  I felt like, man, imagine if there was something like that for queer scientists.  Imagine if you could cross the bridges of discipline and institution and find other queer scientists out there in the world to create a sense of comradery with and to stand up next to. 

 

So, I consulted with some other people.  I talked to a master’s student from the Cal academy that’s queer and who had organized on his own an LGBT meet up at a scientific conference that happened early that year.  I knew he was interested in trying to promote community and ask for his help.  I met with two straight, non-scientist, allies who specialized in social media and are amazing. 

 

(Regina)  I need to do that.  [Laughing.] 

 

(Regina)  I was like, “This is what I want to do, could you help?”  They were like, “We can’t even imagine how honored we would feel to be able to play a part in this, like, this is something we believe in and this is exactly the reason we are in social medias, to do things like this.”  So I got really lucky because I found people who were willing to help me put on a social campaign not knowing myself how to run a social media campaign at all. 

 

(Regina)  And you also didn’t have the fear.  Do you know what I mean?  You didn’t know it well enough to be afraid that something else might happen. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Absolutely.  I mean, I felt once I had their agreement to help, I had people to just run the ideas by and had people who could give me a sense of what to do and what to expect.  So, we launched the campaign in June. 

 

(Regina)  Which is called? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Which is called 500 Queer Scientists.  Prior to June I had started emailing just through colleague networks, looking for people who would be willing to submit they’re bios for launch.  So, just like sort of offline collecting bios. 

 

(Regina)  Friends of friends of friends. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Friends of friends of friends.  My goal was to collect 50 bios to launch and I did, I got 50.  We launched on June 4th of 2018.  With anything, you don’t really know what is going to happen.  I sent out this tweet into the Netherlands of cyberspace. 

 

(Regina)  The Ether.  

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, and then waited, and then almost immediately had this huge response.  Like, a huge outpouring. 

 

(Regina)  Which means it really needed to happen right?  People were waiting for it to happen. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  I think so.  I think there has been a lot of community building among LGBT people and STEM on social media over the last few years.  There have been, there was a survey initiative where people were surveying LGBT experiences in a scientific way.  There’s a lot of hashtags surrounding LGBT STEM like Pride and STEM and LGBT STEM.  This year was the first LGBT STEM Day which was on July 5th.  It was organized by a whole bunch of organizations and individuals.  I think the world was ready.  Like, the STEM world was ready for something to rally behind.  Posting bios which are assessable on line in a brief way was a great way to just raise visibility and the time was right and we launched for Pride Month which is June.  The response was amazing.  Within 3 weeks we had collected 500 so we could put our money where our mouth was and say we have put the 500 in the 500 queer scientists. 

 

(Regina)  And now you have like, 750? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Now we have 750.  The first few weeks was overwhelming because we got, you know, 50+ submissions a say, contributions a day. 

 

(Regina)  Was it just you going through that or your social media people too? 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  It was me and one primary partner, her name is Laurel Allen.  She’s an incredible science communicator and social media pro.  Her and I were going through and copy editing all the bios and manually uploading them. 

 

(Regina)  You have to do that.  There’s got be like, weird, decimals and typos. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah, I mean typos, the form wasn’t amazing.  There was no way to edit it once you submitted it and we also wanted to ensure that all of them were consistent.  We wanted to all be first person like, we want people to tell their stories, not us to tell their stories in third person. 

 

(Regina)  You want to make it your best and it takes a lot of your soul and time. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  It wasn’t just that I wanted to make it my best I wanted everybody to be their best.  You know, I was trying to highlight people for themselves, not for me.  You know, we tried to pay as much of attention to detail as we could can make sure nobody got lost along the way because we were getting so many submissions in.  It could have easily gotten out of control.  Now it’s calmed down.  Social media is like a really dynamic and changing environment.   Running a campaign on social media is something you have to say up on every day. 

 

(Regina)  We found out we are like, the exact same age, right.  So I’m also . . . 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  I’m old.  I’m an old lady in social media. 

 

(Regina)  I say that all the time and my students are like, “You’re not old.”  I’m like, “Yes I am.”  I say stuff all the time that you don’t get. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  I’m a granny.  I’m actually a granny.  So, but, you know, I’m trying to use best practices at the end of the day.  There was one thing after I got off stage that I was like, “Ah, I forget to say that,” and that’s just that, for me, one of the things that was really important when talking about 500 Queer Scientists at SACNAS is that I think all the ways in which our identities are intersectional both make us an asset because in helps science have a broader mindset in the kinds of research we are doing and the ways we are doing that research.  So, it progresses science to have intersectional scientists.  But, at the same time, it makes your identity that much more isolating because now, you’re not only dealing with biases that are implicit with your ethnic background or your heritage, you’re also dealing with biases that are implicit with your gender or your orientation or your sexuality.  That just makes it one tiny bit or one huge amount more difficult to see yourself in STEM or to persist in STEM. 

 

(Regina)  Right.  But to know that you’re valuable. 

 

(Dr. Espocito)  Yeah.  I mean, you are valuable.  Like, what you have to say is more valuable than somebody who can’t think outside the box.  That intersectionality creates as many opportunities for science as a whole because it advances science.  It also creates opportunities on an individual level to hinder your ability to do science.  I think that’s for me, why it was so important for me to talk at SACNAS. 

 

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(Regina)  This show was recorded on location at the convention in San Antonio, Texas.  We’d like to thank Dr. Espocito for taking the time to talk to us at such a busy convention.  You can follow Dr. Espocito on Twitter @ArachnologyNerd.  The movement to highlight LGBTQ+ scientists at @500QueerSci.  500 Q-u-e-e-r-S-c-i.  If you would like to know more about SACNAS, check out their website, SACNAS.org.  You can learn more about Dr. Espocito’s work with scorpions and a cure for cancer by watching her TED Talk from October 2018. 

 

Spark Science is recorded on location in Bellingham Washington at Western Washington University.  The producers are Susan Blaise, Regina Barber DeGraaff, and Robert Clark.  Student editors are Julia Thorpe, Andra Nordin, and Sarah Cokley.  Additional editing is done by WWU video services.  Spark Science is sponsored by WWU and is created in partnership with KMRE.  Thank you for joining us and if you want to listen to past episodes, visit sparksciencenow.com.  If there is a science idea you’re curious about, post a message on our Facebook page or tweet us @SparkScienceNow. 

 

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