The Scorpion Queen
Lauren Esposito’s love of science began at an early age.
“From early childhood I was really interested in insects, but it wasn’t until college that I decided to pursue research on arachnids,” explains the Girl Scout alum who grew up in Texas. She comes from a proud Girl Scout family—her mother was her troop leader and her younger sister is a Gold Award Girl Scout. Lauren sold cookies but recalls her time swimming and horseback riding outside at Girl Scout camp as some of her fondest memories.
“I would also flip over the pavers in the garden at home,” she adds, “and look for crickets.”
At the young age of 16 Lauren went to the University of Texas at El Paso, originally for pre-med.
“My junior year I took a field biology class that involved a week outside during spring break. That’s when I realized that there is still so much we don’t know about the world and about biology.”
Her summer internship at the American Museum of Natural History in New York also helped to shape her career.
“The mentor I was paired with was a scorpion biologist. I learned there were lots of lessons to be learned about ecology and evolution of arachnids,” she recalls. “Scorpions have been around 450 million years—they were the first predators on land, even before dinosaurs or flowers. Looking at them and what’s happened in that time can teach us a lot about how organisms can adapt to changing climates to be successful on Earth.”
Today, she is one of only a handful of female scorpion biologists in the world and has earned the nickname “The Scorpion Queen.” At 40 years old she is the Curator of Arachnology at California Academy of Sciences, a public museum and research institute that’s both the first and oldest natural history museum west of the eastern seaboard. Lauren is on the cutting edge of new findings and discovers new species every year.
She thinks scorpions get a bad rap.
“There are 2,500 species of scorpions,” Lauren explains. “And of those, less than ten percent are anything to be concerned about. The Arizona bark scorpion sting hurts but unless you’re a small child there’s no medical concern.”
As Lauren has grown up in STEM, she has increasingly advocated for the LGBTQIA community in the sciences.
In 2018, she created a visibility campaign that was intended to raise awareness and bring a greater sense of inclusion for people in marginalized LGBTQIA communities. Her campaign, 500 Queer Scientists, called for STEM professionals to celebrate their LGBTQIA identities. It started with 50 personal bios and has grown to more than 1,800 bios today.
The campaign was inspired by her own feelings of isolation.
“Two years into my job, I realized that I was the first openly queer curator in the museum’s history,” Lauren recalls. “Being in San Francisco, it seemed that if I was having this experience, people in other places were too.” She adds, “For many years, I had also kept my queerness and my science life separate. I wouldn’t consider myself in the closet, but it wasn’t something I was talking about. It felt uncomfortable.”
Lauren believes that this is the case across the industry.
“In many ways, people working in STEM still feel like those are professional spaces where they’re not allowed to talk about their identities as queer or trans people.” Lauren, who identifies as queer, believes that this isn’t just damaging to individuals—it’s damaging to STEM itself.
“Innovation is how we make progress and diversity is what’s going to breed new ideas,” Lauren explains. “If everyone approaches a problem with the same background and the same identity, they’re always going to approach the problem the same way. We know this is true based on scientific analysis on when innovation happens and who the individuals are who made it happen.”
Photo credit: Lauren Esposito, Ph.D. © 2016 California Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
