Scorpion Systematics Research Group

Lionel Monod was born in Geneva, Switzerland. After completing a B.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Geneva in 1998, he started a Master’s thesis revising the systematics of Liocheles scorpions at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, graduating in 2000. Monod subsequently worked at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, Geneva, and conducted several field trips to South-East Asia and Australasia. He visited the AMNH to work in the specimen collections and Molecular Systematics Laboratory for 5 weeks in November–December 2002, supervised by Lorenzo Prendini. His main research focus is the systematics and biogeography of the family Liochelidae. In 2005, Monod was awarded a Graduate Student Fellowship from the AMNH to conduct a Ph.D. thesis on the systematics and biogeography of Indo-Pacific liochelids, under the direction of Prendini, and he was subsequently accepted into the Ph.D. program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, City University of New York.

Edmundo González was born in Mexico City. He completed a B.S. in Biology at the Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), in 1998, and an M.S. in Systematics at the Instituto de Biología, UNAM, in 2003. He surveyed the diversity and distribution of the scorpion fauna of Estado de México for his M.S. thesis. In 2004, Edmundo moved to the AMNH, supported by a National Science Foundation REVSYS grant on vaejovid systematics awarded to Lorenzo Prendini. He was accepted in the Ph.D. program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, City University of New York, in 2005, and he is studying systematic biology in preparation for a revision of a major group of North American Vaejovidae, conducted at the AMNH under the direction of Lorenzo Prendini. His research interests are centered upon the evolution, phylogeny and biogeography of Mexican scorpions. He has collected scorpions throughout mainland Mexico and Baja California.

egs@amnh.org

Lauren Esposito was born in El Paso, Texas. She first came to the AMNH in 2002 as an undergraduate intern in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates program, for a summer research project on the systematics of medically important African Parabuthus scorpions, where she became hooked on scorpions. After graduating with her B.S. from the University of Texas at El Paso, as Distinguished Graduate in the Biological Sciences (2003), she was accepted in the Ph.D. program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, City University of New York (2004), and returned to the AMNH to continue research on scorpions. She is revising the systematics of the medically important North American scorpion genus Centruroides for her Ph.D. dissertation, under the direction of Lorenzo Prendini, and is currently supported by a MAGNET-SEM fellowship, and an NSF AGEP fellowship. Esposito has collected scorpions in the southwestern USA and the Greater Antilles. She is also the Lab Manager for the Scorpion Molecular Systematics Lab.