| Horace Donisthorpe |
Article Index for Horace |
Website Links For Horace |
Information AboutHorace Donisthorpe |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT HORACE DONISTHORPE | |
| 1870 births | |
| donisthorpe, horace st. john kelly | |
| 1951 deaths | |
| english entomologists | |
| donisthorpe, horace | |
| myrmecologists | |
| coleopterists | |
| fellows of the zoological society of london | |
|
Horace St. John Kelly Donisthorpe ( March 17 , 1870 – April 22 , 1951 ) was an eccentric British Myrmecologist and Coleopterist , memorable in part for his enthusiastic championing of the renaming of the Genus '' Lasius '' after him as ''Donisthorpea'', and for his many claims of discovering new species of Beetle s and Ant s. He is often considered to be the greatest figure in British myrmecology. BIOGRAPHY Educated at Mill Hill House, Leicester and Oakham Grammar School, Donisthorpe went to Heidelberg University to read Medicine . However, his "too sensitive nature" forced him to give up this career. Being possessed of a private income, from about 1890 he devoted his life to the study of beetles and ants. Probably the best known of his collecting grounds were the ancient forests of Windsor Great Park in Berkshire where he had permission to collect extensively and where so many of his important discoveries were made. Donisthorpe was controversial in part because he was often considered overeager in his attempts to identify new species of ants and beetles. In fact, of the 30 new species he identified, 24 were subsequently deemed to be insufficiently distinct to be considered separate species or to be Synonym ous with previous valid species. It is, however, accepted that he did indeed identify the following new species:
all named to honour his colleagues. Species which Donisthorpe described anew that turned out to have been previously classified include (from ''New Species of Ants (Hym., Formicidae) from the Gold Coast, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea and New Hebrides''):
''Polyrhachis hosei'' provides an interesting demonstration of Donisthorpe's zeal for new species coming into conflict with existing ones. His description starts: "The general description of ''P.(M.) byyani'' would do equally well for this species..." and then goes on to describe a small number of very minor differences: "a larger and more robust insect", "pronotal spines longer", "the scale has a somewhat wider arch", and so on. Donisthorpe was a Fellow of the Zoological Society Of London and a Fellow and Vice-Chairman of the Royal Entomological Society . BOOKS
OTHER WRITINGS Donisthorpe, as chair of the Zoological Society Of London and in his work at the Natural History Museum , London , often wrote of and described new species and species' habits from all around the world in various entomological journals, such as ''Animals and the Magazine of Natural History''. Donisthorpe also wrote two chapters of ''Wild Life the World Over: Comprising Twenty-Seven Chapters Written by Nine Distinguished World-Traveled Specialists'', which was published in 1953 , two years after his death. LOCATIONS IN BRITAIN VISITED BY HORACE DONISTHORPE Donisthorpe visited many locations in the British Isles in which he collected and recorded unusual species of British Ants :
''See also British Ants .'' EXTERNAL LINK |
|
|