Ichthyology

The practice of ichthyology is closely connected with Marine Biology , Limnology , and Oceanography .

HISTORY

The first scientific description of fish occurs in Aristotle , who mentions various facts about 118 species. Little additional work is known until the 1500s , when Guillaume Rondelet published his '' De Piscibus Marinum '' describing 244 species. During the 1600s , explorers found new types of fish; George Markgraf 's '' Naturalis Brasilae '' added another 100 species, and in 1686 the '' Historia Piscium '' of John Ray and Francis Willughby described over 400 species.

The title "father of ichthyology" belongs to Peter Artedi , a student of Linnaeus who identified five orders of "fishes" (including Cetacean s) and divided those into genera. Artedi drowned by accident in an Amsterdam canal in 1735 , and Linnaeus published his manuscripts posthumously.

During the 18th and 19th Century , a steady stream of specimens from all parts of the world deluged museums.

In the 1780s Marcus Elieser Bloch published '' Ichthyologia '' as a series of volumes of plates, and after he died, his associate Johann Gottlob Schneider published the '' M. E. Blochii Systemae Ichthyologiae '' describing 1,519 species.

Georges Cuvier 's '' Regne Animal Distribué D’après Son Organisation '' of 1817-1830 was a key step forward for fish classification, and Cuvier worked with his student Achille Valenciennes to produce the 22-volume '' Histoire Naturelle Des Poissons '' in the 1830s - though never completed, the work described 4,514 species.

Albert Günther published his '' Catalogue Of The Fishes Of The British Museum '' between 1859 and 1870 , describing over 6,800 species and mentioning another 1,700.

The greatest ichthyologist around the beginning of the 20th Century is generally considered to be David Starr Jordan , who wrote 650 articles and books on the subject, in addition to serving as president of Indiana University and Stanford University .

JOURNALS