The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals

By Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins and Michael Grayson

Learn the origins of over 2,000 mammal species names with this informative reference guide.

Just who was the Przewalski after whom Przewalski's horse was named? Or Husson, the eponym for the rat Hydromys hussoni? Or the Geoffroy whose name is forever linked to Geoffroy's cat? This unique reference provides a brief look at the real lives behind the scientific and vernacular mammal names one encounters in field guides, textbooks, journal articles, and other scholarly works.

Arranged to mirror standard dictionaries, the more than 1,300 entries included here explain the origins of over 2,000 mammal species names. Each bio-sketch lists the scientific and common-language names of all species named after the person, outlines the individual’s major contributions to mammalogy and other branches of zoology, and includes brief information about his or her mammalian namesake’s distribution. The two appendixes list scientific and common names for ease of reference, and, where appropriate, individual entries include mammals commonly—but mistakenly—believed to be named after people.

The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals is a highly readable and informative guide to the people whose names are immortalized in mammal nomenclature.

“A small treasure trove of information about the people whose names are immortalized in mammalian nomenclature. Given that we mammalogists are prone to ancestor worship, I expect it to be a best-seller.” —Don E. Wilson, Journal of Mammalian Evolution

“This is a great reference for the mammalogy professional or student, or the curious naturalist.” —Wildlife Activist

“This is a splendid book which fills a real gap in zoological literature.” —Nicholas Gould, International Zoo News

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 18, 2009
• ISBN: 9780801895333

Bo Beolens

Richard Crombet-Beolens is known to all as Bo Beolens or as his online personae, the ‘Grumpy Old Birder’ and the ‘Fatbirder’. While much of his career was in community work and as the CEO of various charities, all his free time has been spent birding or otherwise pursuing his life-long interest in the natural world. Since the late 1990s he has had articles published in a variety of birding magazines in the UK and USA. He is co-author of three other ‘eponym dictionaries’ and has a book of memoirs in publication. He has also written for several disability publications.

Book preview

The EPONYM DICTIONARY

of MAMMALS

The EPONYM

DICTIONARY

of MAMMALS

Bo Beolens

Michael Watkins

Michael Grayson

© 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2009

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beolens, Bo.

The eponym dictionary of mammals / by Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, and Mike Grayson.

     p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9304-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8018-9304-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Mammals—Dictionaries. 2. Eponyms—Dictionaries. I. Watkins, Michael, 1940– II. Grayson, Mike. III. Title.

QL701.2.B46  2009

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

The title page illustration is a tarsier from the nineteenth-century engraving; he also appears on the opener pages of the alphabetic groups and on page 164.

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [e-mail].

The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid-free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Appendix 1: Vernacular Names

Appendix 2: Scientific Names

Bibliography

Preface

Two of us, Bo Beolens and Mike Watkins, wrote Whose Bird? which was published in November 2003. A review of Whose Bird? was written by Nicholas Gould for the journal International Zoo News. Gould suggested that there could be a need for similar volumes on other animal classes, and among them he suggested mammals. We wish to give credit and thanks here to the person whose suggestion began the conversations that led to our writing of this book.

As there are only about half as many mammal species as bird species, we assumed our new book would not be as long as Whose Bird? How wrong we were! It turns out that there are a very large number of people who have only one mammal species named after them.

Given that one man, Oldfield Thomas of the British Museum of Natural History, seemed to have described half of the mammal species ever discovered, we also assumed our research task would prove much easier than it had been for Whose Bird? Wrong again. But in the end it paid off, and the book you hold is the result not only of our perseverance, but of the labors of many people who assisted us without hesitation.

We are deeply indebted to the following people and organizations for their generous help with research and, where needed, translations: Mark A. Adams, Researcher, Evolutionary Biology Unit, South Australian Museum, Australia; Cleber J. R. Alho, Conservação e Uso Sustentável da Biodiversidade, Brasília, Brazil; Mike Archer, Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia; Dickon and Ito Corrado, Tokyo, Japan; Sylvie Coten-Watkins, Montmorency, France; Gabor Csorba, Deputy Director, Curator of Mammals, Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Ross Cunningham, Canberra ACT, Australia; Fritz Dieterlen, Staatlisches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Germany; Peter D. Dwyer, Research Fellow, University of Melbourne, Australia; Louise H. Emmons, Research Associate at the Smithsonian Division of Mammals, Washington DC, USA; Tim Flannery, Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia; Pavel German, Wildlife Images, New South Wales, Australia; Nicholas Gould, International Zoo News, Orkney, Scotland; David L. Harrison, Harrison Zoological Museum Trust, England; Lawrence R. Heaney, Curator of Mammals, Department of Zoology, University of Chicago, USA; Colin Higgins, Bat Conservation Trust, London, UK; Geoffrey Hope, Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; Kim M. Howell, Professor of Zoology and Marine Biology, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Tony M. Hutson, East Sussex, England, UK; Rainer Hutterer, Museum Alexander Koenig, Bonn, Germany; Paula D. Jenkins, Collections Manager, Mammal Curation Group, Natural History Museum, London; Viner Khabibullin, Bashkir State University, Ufa City, Bashkortostan, Russia; Rael and Helena Loon, South Africa; Tim May, London, England; David Minter, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Philip Myers, Associate Professor and Associate Curator of Mammals, Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, USA; Bruce Patterson, MacArthur Curator, Department of Zoology (Mammals), Field Museum, Chicago, USA; Heather Prestridge, Assistant Curator, Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collection, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA; Gavin J. Prideaux, Research Fellow, Western Australian Museum, Perth, Australia; Eric Rickart, Curator of Vertebrates, Utah Museum of Natural History, University of Utah, USA; Jevgeni Shergalin, Tallinn, Estonia; Steve Van Dyck, Senior Curator of Vertebrates, Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia; Manfred Warth, Staatlisches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Germany; Charles Watkins, Montmorency, France; Nicholas Watkins, Oxford, England; Suzanne Watkins, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, England; Chris Watts, South Australian Museum, Adelaide, Australia.

Introduction

Who Is It For?

Much as birders often come across bird names that include the name of a person (such names are properly called eponyms), and their curiosity is aroused just as ours was, so will people come across similar eponyms for mammals. We have all heard of Przewalski’s Horse or Thomson’s Gazelle, but how familiar is Nolthenius’ Long-tailed Climbing Mouse or Bannister’s Melomys? This book is for the curious mammalogist as much as it is for the student of zoology.

How to Use This Book

This book is arranged alphabetically by the names of the people after whom mammals have been named. Generally, the easiest way to find your animal is to look it up under the personal name that is apparently embedded in the animal’s common or scientific name. We say apparently, as things are not always as simple as they seem. In some names, for example, the apostrophe implying ownership is a transcription error; in other instances the animal may have been named after a place, not a person. We have included any such names where we think confusion might arise, but we do not promise to have been comprehensive in that respect. You should also beware of spelling. Surf the Internet, and you may well find animals’ names spelled in a number of different ways; the greatest resource there has ever been is also full of inaccuracies and misinformation, so beware. We have tried to include entries on those alternatives, if we have ourselves come across them.

Each entry follows a standard format. First, you will find the name of the person honored. Next, there follows a list of animals named after that person, arranged in order of the year in which they were described. This list gives common names, scientific names, names of the people who first described each species, and the date of the original descriptions—in that sequence. Alternative English names follow in brackets and are each preceded by the abbreviation Alt. Alternative scientific names (in cases where taxonomists are not in agreement) are preceded by the abbreviation Syn. (synonym). Finally, there is a brief biography of that individual.

To assist you in your search, we have cross-referenced the entries by highlighting (in bold) the names of those describers who also appear in the book. Some mammals are named in different ways after the same person, and we have also tried to marry these up using cross-references. So, for example, a species named after Queen Victoria might be called Queen Victoria’s Shrew or Victoria’s Shrew, or Queen’s Shrew or even Empress’s Shrew. Interestingly, this is most often the case where aristocratic titles are concerned. For example, the Earl of Derby, whose family name is Stanley, has mammals named after him in at least three different ways.

The greatness of a person’s fame does not correspond to the length of the entry—in fact, often the opposite. Very famous people such as Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) have fairly brief write-ups. They are, after all, so well known, and so much has been written about them, that it is unnecessary for us to reiterate it.

We have provided lists of vernacular and scientific names at the back; these include two animals for which there is a vernacular name but no scientific name. These lists often provided the only way in which we could cross-reference the various personal names that had at different times been given to the same animal. Mammals may be named in the vernacular after the finder, after the person who wrote the description, or after some other person of the latter’s choice. When more than one person has thought a species new, the mammal may get more than one set of names. An animal could thus warrant an entry in as many as six different places!

There are a great number of recent namings of fossil mammals. As the rate at which fossil remains are discovered and described seems to be increasing so rapidly, and the disagreement among the paleontologists appears epidemic, we decided that we would ignore anything that became extinct in prehistoric times—that is, more than about 500 years ago (in simplistic terms, before Columbus discovered America).

What’s in a Name?

Tracking down the provenance of eponymous mammal names, and finding out about the individuals responsible for them, proved to be fraught with difficulties. Our final list contains 2,351 entries. However, this may be misleading, since these entries actually cover only 2,310 animals. The names honor 1,388 individual people, but there are also 47 that sound like people’s names but in fact are not. Additionally we can add 6 tribes of indigenous people, 3 fictional characters, 8 biblical references, and 45 references to classical mythology or literature. Most annoying of all, there are entries for 10 names of people whom we have been unable to identify.

Describers and Namers

New species are first brought to the notice of the scientific community in a formal, published description of a type specimen—essentially a dead example of the species—which will eventually be lodged in a scientific collection. The person who describes the species will give it its scientific name, usually in Latin but sometimes in Latinized ancient Greek. Sometimes the new animal is later reclassified, and then the scientific name may be changed. This frequently applies to generic names (the first part of a binomial name), but specific scientific names (the second part of a binomial), once proposed, usually cannot be amended or replaced; there are precise and complicated rules governing any such name changes. Conventionally, a changed name is indicated by putting parentheses around the describer’s name. Let us use a classic ornithological example from Whose Bird? to illustrate this. The Grey Heron was named Ardea cinerea by Linnaeus in 1758, and since that name remains recognized to this day, the bird is officially named Ardea cinerea Linnaeus, 1758. Linnaeus also described the Great Bittern as Ardea stellaris in the same year. However, bitterns have since been awarded their own genus, and we now officially call the bird Botaurus stellaris (Linnaeus, 1758), the parentheses indicating that the name was not the namer’s original choice. The scientific names used in this book are largely those used by Duff and Lawson in their Mammals of the World—A Checklist, published in 2004. Occasionally we have been persuaded to swap a name from this checklist for one used in the Smithsonian database or in other recent authorities. We may have missed a few recently published taxonomic changes, but we have put the name of the original describer after every entry; hence the normal convention regarding such parentheses does not apply here. Because alterations to taxonomy have been so radical, and so often swiftly changing, we decided we would never get the parentheses around the right entries and so have omitted them entirely.

Although we have used current scientific names as far as possible, these are not always as universal as the casual observer might suppose. In addition to some animals having been reclassified since they were first discovered and described, there are other cases where various authorities and textbooks do not agree on which name to use; this invariably applies to generic names, where there may be disagreement on an animal’s taxonomic affinities. There is no world authority on such matters.

There are no agreed-upon conventions for English names, and indeed the choice of vernacular names is often controversial. Very often the person who coined the scientific name will also have given it a vernacular name, which may not be an English name if the describer was not an English-speaker. On the other hand, vernacular names—including English ones—have often been added afterward, frequently by people other than the describers. In this book, therefore, when we refer to an animal as having been named by someone, we mean that that person gave it the English name in question. We refer to someone as a describer when that person was responsible for the original description of the species and hence for its scientific or Latin name. As we said above, it is the describer’s name that is given after the scientific name in the entries.

Animals Named after More Than One Person

Throughout the text you may come across several different names for the same species. In some cases these names are honorifics; for example, Andrews’ Beaked Whale is the same species as Bowdoin’s Beaked Whale. This peculiarity has sometimes come about through simple mistakes or misunderstandings, such as believing juveniles or females to be a different species from the adult male. In some cases the same animal was found at about the same time in two different places, and only later has it emerged that this is the same animal named twice. Some of these duplications persist even today, with the same mammal being called something different in different places or by different people.

Recently there has been an example of an animal changing not only its vernacular and scientific names but its describer and date too. Huet’s Dormouse Graphiurus hueti Rochebrune, 1883, has now been changed to Nagtglas’ Dormouse Graphiurus nagtglasii Jentink, 1888. It seems that no type specimen exists for hueti, and as it was said to have come from Senegal and has never been seen in that country since, a number of authorities have decided to use the next oldest synonym for which a type specimen does exist; thus nagtglasii gets promoted. The reader will find the animal entered under both Huet and Nagtglas but should remember that whatever it is called, it is still just one species of dormouse.

Unidentified Persons

Unfortunately we have not been able to identify everyone whose name appears in that of an animal. There are, as we observed above, 10 names on our list that are just not traceable. For example, who was the Fellows of Protochromys fellowsi? Some Victorians seem to have had the sentimental notion of naming animals after female relatives or mistresses. In some cases we suspect the author has named the animal after a woman but has deliberately (gallantly?) withheld her full name—for example, Dorothy’s Slender Mouse-Opossum Marmosops dorothea as described by Thomas in 1911. Such people clearly had no regard for those of us doing this kind of research!

Male or Female?

In some cases we know that an animal is named after a man, even though its scientific name is in the feminine. This seems to occur only when a name ends in the letter a. Presumably the reason for this is that many singular Latin nouns ending in a are feminine; for example, mensa means table (nothing very feminine about that), and the possessive/genitive case is mensae, not mensai. There are a number of masculine Latin nouns ending in a (e.g. agricola, meaning farmer), but they are declined as though they were feminine. Thus the convention is that the feminine form is adopted in such cases. For example, Olalla’s Titi is named after Alfonso M. Olalla, but the scientific name is Callicebus olallae. This convention seems to have been falling into disuse in recent years. It is quite striking how many modern namings ignore it.

Red Herrings

Further confusion arises from the number of animals that appear to be named after people but upon closer examination turn out to be named after a place, such as an island, that was itself named after a person. We have included these with an appropriate note, as other sources of reference will not necessarily help the enquirer.

Interestingly, this volume contains a couple of examples where, because the common local name has been incorrectly assumed to be a person, a misleading possessive apostrophe has been added.

Weighing the Evidence

Ultimately, our decisions on what to include in this book depended upon the weight of available evidence. Wherever there is any doubt, we have made this clear. In some cases we have had to reject a possible attribution when the evidence is just too nebulous. For example, we might have attributed Therese’s Shrew to Theresa Clay, the niece and companion of Richard Meinertzhagen, as it became clear that Heim de Balsac, who described and named the animal in 1968, knew them both. However, the animal in question proved to be named after someone entirely different.

The EPONYM DICTIONARY

of MAMMALS

A

Abbott

Abbott’s Duiker Cephalophus spadix True, 1890

Abbott’s Grey Gibbon Hylobates muelleri abbotti Kloss, 1929

Dr. William Louis Abbott (1860–1936) was a student, naturalist, and collector. He initially qualified as a medical doctor at the University of Pennsylvania and worked as a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in London. However, he decided not to pursue medicine but instead to use his private wealth for scientific exploration. In 1880, as a student, he had collected in Iowa and Dakota, and in 1883 in Cuba and San Domingo. In 1887 he went to East Africa, spending two years there. From 1891 he studied the wildlife of the Indo-Malayan region, using his Singapore-based ship Terrapin, and made large collections of mammals from Southeast Asia for the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian) in Washington, DC, USA. In 1897 he switched to Siam (Thailand) and spent 10 years exploring and collecting in and around the China Sea. He provided much of the Kenya material in the Smithsonian and was the author of Ethnological Collections in the United States National Museum from Kilima-Njaro, East Africa, published in the museum’s Annual Report for 1891. In 1917 he returned to San Domingo (Hispaniola), exploring the interior. He retired to Maryland but continued his lifelong study of natural history until his death. He is also commemorated in the names of several birds, such as Abbott’s Babbler Malacocincla abbotti and Abbott’s Starling Cinnyricinclus femoralis, and of a lizard, Abbott’s Day Gecko Phelsuma abbotti. The duiker is found in the highlands of Tanzania and the gibbon in western Borneo.

Abe

Abe’s Whiskered Bat Myotis abei Yoshikura, 1944 [Alt. Sakhalin Myotis]

Yoshio Abe (1883–1945) was Professor of Zoology at Karahuto Normal University. Makoto Yoshikura, who described the bat, studied there under him. In his description Yoshikura says that the bat is named to commemorate Professor Abe and to express sincere gratitude for the guidance and instruction he provided. In 1930 Professor Abe was the first Japanese scientist to study and publish on kinorhynchs (microscopic marine invertebrates), and one, Dra-coderes abei, was named after him as late as 1990 in recognition of his studies. The bat is known only from the type specimen found on the island of Sakhalin (now part of Russia but occupied by Japan in 1944). It was only in 1956 that Yoshikura decided on the English name Abe’s Whiskered Bat in his paper Insectivores and Bats of South Sakhalin. A study published in 2004 concluded that this species is not valid and should be regarded as a junior synonym of Daubenton’s Bat Myotis daubentoni.

Abel

Sumatran Orangutan Pongo abelii Lesson, 1827

Dr. Clarke Abel (1780–1826) was a British physician and naturalist. He was Chief Medical Officer and Naturalist to the Embassy of Lord Amherst to the Court of Peking from 1816 to 1817; this was Britain’s second attempt at establishing relations with the Emperor of China. After detailed observation and collection of assorted cultivated and wild plants on the way to and back from the capital, he wrote Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China and of a Voyage to and from That Country, in 1816 and 1817. Returning from China in 1818, Abel was subsequently appointed Physician to Lord Amherst in India, where he later died. At some point he was shipwrecked and all of his original collections went down with the ship, but he continued to collect while in Batavia (now Jakarta), where he acquired the orangutan skin. The familiar garden plant abelia is named after him. The orangutans of Borneo and Sumatra were formerly regarded as a single species, but the Sumatran form is now usually accorded the status of a full species.

Abert

Abert’s Squirrel Sciurus aberti Woodhouse, 1853

Colonel John James Abert (1788–1863) was an American military man and engineer. He studied at West Point from 1808 until 1811 but resigned from the army on the very day that he graduated. He was then employed by the War Office and studied law, being admitted to the Bar in the District of Columbia in 1813. During the War of 1812 he served as a private for the defense of the capital, which was sacked and burned by the British army. In 1814 he was re-appointed to the army with the rank of Major of Topographical Engineers. From 1816 to 1824 he was based mainly on the Atlantic coast. In 1824 he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in recognition of 10 years’ service. He worked on the Ohio Canal from 1824 to 1825 and then worked in Maine until 1827. In 1828 he became Chief of the Topographical Bureau in Washington, being promoted Colonel in charge of the newly formed Corps of Topographical Engineers in 1838, a position he held until his retirement on the grounds of ill-health in 1861. He belonged to a number of scientific societies and was among those who organized the National Institute of Science that was later merged in to the Smithsonian Institution. The squirrel inhabits the pine forests of the southwest USA and northwest Mexico.

Abid

Northern Glider Petaurus abidi Ziegler, 1981

Abid Beg Mirza (dates not found) was a collector employed by the University of Maryland Pakistan Medical Centre in Lahore in 1964. He was involved in a survey of Pakistani mammals and their parasites. In an article, Additions to the Avifauna of the Adelbert Range, Papua New Guinea, published in The Emu, he is mentioned as having organized the trip and supervised the survey of mammals and preparation of all specimens. He collected the type specimen of the glider, perhaps on that trip to New Guinea. This marsupial is found in the Torricelli Mountains of northern New Guinea.

Achates

Brown-bearded Sheath-tailed Bat Taphozous achates Thomas, 1915 [Alt. Indonesian Tomb Bat]

Achates is a character in Virgil’s Aeneid. He is always referred to as Aeneas’ faithful friend. Thomas was fond of using names from classical literature and mythology when describing mammal species. Often there seems to be no obvious reason for his choice of name. The bat is found on some small islands in eastern Indonesia, including Savu, Roti, and the Kei Islands.

Adam

Adam’s Horseshoe Bat Rhinolophus adami Aellen and Brosset, 1968

François Adam is (or was) a French agronomist and zoologist who collected bats in West Africa and co-wrote a number of articles on them in the early 1970s including, in 1975, jointly with Aellen (one of the describers of the bat) "Présence de Glauconycteris beatrix (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) en Côte d’Ivoire." He became Director of the National Agronomic Research Institute in Lomé, Togo. The horseshoe bat is found in the Republic of Congo.

Adams, C. D.

Ear-spot Squirrel Callosciurus adamsi Kloss, 1921

C. D. Adams (dates not found) was the District Officer at Baram in North Sarawak on the island of Borneo during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Major J. C. Moulton (1886–1926) collected the type specimen and specifically asked Kloss to name the animal after Adams as a mark of his gratitude for the exceptional help Adams had given him during his expedition. Moulton had been the Curator of the Sarawak Museum from 1909 to 1915 and was Director of the Raffles Museum in Singapore from 1919 to 1923, during which period Kloss was a member of his staff. Kloss succeeded him as Director. The squirrel is found only on Borneo.

Adams, M. A.

Cape York Pipistrelle Pipistrellus adamsi Kitchener, Caputi, and Jones, 1986

Dr. Mark Andrew Adams (b. 1954) is Senior Researcher at the Evolutionary Biology Unit, South Australian Museum. He is the Evolutionary Biology Unit’s longest-serving researcher, with over 30 years’ experience in the molecular systematics of Australian fauna. He has published over 130 scientific papers and is a leading authority on allozyme electrophoresis, having co-authored a major reference work on the subject in 1986, Allozyme Electrophoresis: A Handbook for Animal Systematics and Population Studies. He is also a very experienced field-worker, having undertaken trips to every part of Australia and to New Guinea. The pipistrelle is found in northern Australia (Queensland and the Northern Territory).

Aders

Black-and-Rufous Elephant-Shrew Rhynchocyon petersi adersi Dollman, 1912

Aders’ Duiker Cephalophus adersi Thomas, 1918

Zanzibar Leopard Panthera pardus adersi Pocock, 1932

Dr. William Mansfield-Aders D.Sc. (dates not found) was an entomologist and physician. He was living and working in Zanzibar as Government Zoologist between the 1900s and late 1920s. There is a collection of beetles, found by him in Zanzibar, now in the British Museum of Natural History. He also wrote articles on diseases and the invertebrates that carry them, as well as on other aspects of natural history, for example Economic Zoology Report for the Year 1913. Section III Zanzibar Protectorate, Entomology in Relation to Agriculture and Insects Injurious to Man and Stock in Zanzibar (1914), and Insects Injurious to Man and Stock in Zanzibar (1917). He conducted a survey in 1928 regarding the prevalence of sleeping sickness there and how it could be controlled by the control of insect carriers. He is noted as having photographed someone climbing into palm trees to collect malarial mosquitoes in 1921. He is also commemorated in the scientific names of other taxa including a blackfly, Simulium adersi, and a nematode, Cylicocyclus adersi. All three mammals named after Aders are found on Zanzibar; the duiker is also found in one locality in coastal Kenya. The leopard has not been scientifically recorded since the early 1980s, but a few may still be extant based on unconfirmed local sightings.

Adolf Friedrich

Adolf Friedrich’s Angolan Colobus Colobus angolensis ruwenzorii Thomas, 1901

Adolf Friedrich Albrecht Heinrich, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1873–1969), led an expedition to German East Africa from 1907 to 1908 and also led the German Central Africa expedition of 1910–1911. He served as Governor of Togoland (then a German colony, now called Togo) from 1912 to 1914. Between 1926 and 1956 he was a member of the German Olympic Committee, being President of it from 1949 to 1951. He wrote a number of books about his travels in Africa including, in 1912, Von Kongo zum Niger und Nil (From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile). In 1914, Matschie named a species of colobus as Colobus adolfi-frederici. This is now regarded as a junior synonym of Colobus angolensis ruwenzorii (Thomas, 1901), but the synonym has survived as a rarely used common name. The colobus is found in eastern DRC (Zaire), Rwanda, Burundi, and southwest Uganda.

Aeecl

Aeecl’s Sportive Lemur Lepilemur aeeclis Andriaholinirina et al., 2006

This lemur is named not after a person but, possibly uniquely, after the acronym of an organization, Association Européenne pour l’Étude et la Conservation des Lémuriens (AEECL). The lemur is endemic to a small area of western Madagascar.

Aellen

Aellen’s Roundleaf Bat Hipposideros marisae Aellen, 1954

Aellen’s Pipistrelle Pipistrellus inexspectatus Aellen, 1959

Southern Myotis Myotis aelleni Baud, 1979

Professor Villy Aellen (1926–2000) was a Swiss zoologist. His first degree was from the University of Neuchâtel, and his doctorate, which he earned from a study of bats from Cameroon, was awarded by that city’s Zoological Museum in 1952. His first job was as a conservator in the Vertebrates Section of the Geneva Museum of Natural History, where he went on to become Director in 1969; he remained an Honorary Director until his death. He taught at the University of Geneva from 1966 until 1989. He was recognized internationally as an expert on cave-dwelling fauna of all kinds. He wrote a great many papers about bats in particular, very often those in his native Switzerland, but he also made field trips elsewhere, for example to Morocco. He wrote a paper in 1965, Les rongeurs de basse Côte-d’Ivoire. The pipistrelle has been recorded in Benin, Cameroon, DRC (Zaire), Uganda, and Kenya; the roundleaf bat in Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Guinea; and the myotis in southwest Argentina. See also Marisa.

Aello

Broad-striped Tube-nosed Bat Nyctimene aello Thomas, 1900

Aello, which means whirlwind, was one of the mythical Harpies, creatures usually depicted as birds with women’s upper bodies. They are found in Greek mythology (in Homer’s Odyssey, they are regarded as storm winds), and three of them—Aello, Ocypete, and Celaeno, who were the daughters of the Nereid Electra and Thaumas—were very ugly. Their sister Iris was, in contrast, very beautiful. Thomas was fond of choosing names from mythology and using them as binomials, as in this example, without putting them into the genitive. The bat is found in New Guinea.

Agag

Agag Gerbil Gerbillus agag Thomas, 1903

Agag is a biblical character, King of the Amale-kites. He was defeated in battle and captured by King Saul, who spared his life, but unfortunately for Agag, the Prophet Samuel disagreed and hacked him to death. A fuller account can be read in the Bible, in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 15). There is another reference in the Old Testament to an Agag, and it may be that it was actually the Amalekite word for king. Thomas seems to have been inspired to use this choice of scientific name by the type locality where the gerbil was taken: Agageh Wells in Kordofan (Sudan). Its taxonomy is not well defined, and its distribution—sometimes said to extend from southern Mauritania and northern Nigeria to Sudan—may involve more than one taxon.

Agricola

Agricola’s Gracile Opossum Cryptonanus agricolai Moojen, 1943 [Syn. Gracilinanus agricolai]

Dr. Ernani Agricola (1883–1978) was a prominent Brazilian physician who held positions in several government organizations and international bodies such as the International Leprosy Society. In addition to the opossum he is commemorated in the names of hospital departments and a street in his home province of Minas Gerais. In his description of the opossum, Moojen explains that in 1936 Dr. Agricola encouraged a man by the name of Antenor Leitão de Carvalho to collect mammal specimens in northeast Brazil. This work resulted in the incorporation into the Brazilian National Museum of a very significant collection, accompanied by excellent field notes. The opossum is found in eastern Brazil. It was long regarded as being synonymous with Gracilinanus emiliae but is now again treated as a valid species.

Ahmanson

Ahmanson’s Sportive Lemur Lepilemur ahmansoni Louis et al., 2006

Robert H. Ahmanson (1927–2007) and the Ahmanson Foundation, of which Robert was President and Trustee, give a lot of support to Malagasy students both in Madagascar and at Henry Dorley Zoo’s Center for Conservation and Research at Omaha, Nebraska. He was a right-wing businessman from the finance world before his retirement in 1995. The lemur is endemic to western Madagascar.

Aitken

Kangaroo Island Dunnart Sminthopsis aitkeni Kitchener, Stoddart, and Henry, 1984

Peter F. Aitken was an expert on Australian mammals who was Senior Curator of Mammals at the South Australian Museum from 1972 to 1986. He was a prolific publisher of scientific papers from the 1960s to the 1980s, mostly on marsupials, often in the South Australian Naturalist or the Records of the South Australian Museum. He co-wrote Marine Mammals in South Australia with J. K. Ling. There is a Peter F. Aitken Medal that has been awarded annually since 1989 for Contributions to the Conservation of Australian Mammals. The dunnart lives on Kangaroo Island in South Australia and was first found in the early 1980s by the museum’s researchers when Aitken was Curator of Mammals.

Ajax

Kashmir Grey Langur Semnopithecus (entellus) ajax Pocock, 1928

Ajax was a hero in Greek mythology who is mentioned by Homer in his account of the Trojan War and who is also the subject of a tragedy by Sophocles. There was something of a fad for naming Indian langurs after characters from Homer and Virgil (see also Entellus, Hector, and Priam). This monkey is found in northern India.

Alberico

Alberico’s Broad-nosed Bat Platyrrhinus albericoi Velazco, 2005

Professor Dr. Michael Alberico (1937–2005) was an American biologist and zoologist who was a Professor at Del Valle University, Colombia. He moved to Colombia in 1980, after graduating in biology from the University of Illinois and taking his master’s degree and doctorate in zoology at the University of New Mexico in 1979. He was murdered, shot dead after withdrawing money from an ATM in the city of Cali. In the citation he is described as one who devoted his scientific career to the study of Colombian mammals. The bat is found on the eastern slope of the Andes from Ecuador to Bolivia.

Alcathoe

Alcathoe’s Myotis Myotis alcathoe Helversen and Heller, 2001

In Greek myth, the Minyads were the daughters of Minyas, at the time when the worship of Dionysus was introduced into Boeotia. They became insane and conceived a craving for human flesh. One of the Minyads was Alcathoe. According to one myth, Alcathoe and her sister Arsinoe, while the other women and maidens were indulging in Bacchic frolics, remained at home devoting themselves to their usual occupations—thus profaning the days sacred to the god. Dionysus punished them by changing them into bats. This species of bat was first identified in Greece and Hungary but has since been found in several other European countries including Slovakia, Bulgaria, France, and Spain.

Alcorn

Alcorn’s Pocket Gopher Pappogeomys alcorni Russell, 1957

J. Ray Alcorn (dates not found) spent most of his life and career devoted to wildlife biology, with much of it spent working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1943 he published an article entitled The Introduced Fishes of Nevada with a History of Their Introduction and in 1946, as an Assistant District Agent of the Fish and Wildlife Service, he wrote an article for the Journal of Mammalogy entitled On the Decoying of Coyotes. He also spent over 50 years gathering data for The Birds of Nevada, which was eventually published in 1988. In 1947 and 1948 he collected small mammals along the Alaska Highway in British Columbia, southern Yukon, and southern Alaska. In 1949 and 1954–1956 he was collecting in Mexico. In 1956 he and his family sent specimens from Nicaragua to the Mammalogy Division, Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas. There is a J. R. Alcorn Collection held at the University of Nevada, made up of specimens he collected and donated. The gopher is found in west-central Mexico.

Alecto

Small Asian Sheath-tailed Bat Emballonura alecto Eydoux and Gervais, 1836

Black Flying Fox Pteropus alecto Temminck, 1837

Short-eared Bat Cyttarops alecto Thomas, 1913

Pygmy Fruit Bat Aethalops alecto Thomas, 1923

Alecto, in Greek mythology, was one of the Furies; the others were Tisiphone and Megaera. They had snakes for hair, eyes that dripped blood, heads of dogs, and wings of bats. They persecuted men and women who committed crimes against the moral and natural order, such as patricide or fratricide. They worked by driving their victims mad. The ancient Greeks believed in the power of euphemism, and so to propitiate the Furies they often referred to them as the Eumenides—the kind-hearted ones. The sheath-tailed bat is found in the Philippines and parts of Indonesia; the flying fox is found in Sulawesi, southern New Guinea, and northern Australia; the short-eared bat’s range extends from Nicaragua to northeast Brazil; and the fruit bat is found in Malaysia and Indonesia (Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Bali, and Lombok).

Alexander

Alexander’s Bush Squirrel Paraxerus alexandri Thomas and Wroughton, 1907

Alexander’s Cusimanse Crossarchus alexandri Thomas and Wroughton, 1907 [Alt. Alexander’s Mongoose]

Captain Boyd Alexander (1873–1910) was an African traveler and ornithologist. He was educated at Radley College from 1887 until 1891, joined the army in 1893, and was at Kumasi in 1900. He explored Lake Chad from 1904 until 1905 and made a geographical survey of West Africa between 1905 and 1906. He spent some time on the island of Fernando Pó (now Bioko), and many of the taxa that he described have poensis in their binomial, referring to that island. He was a Royal Geographical Society medalist in 1908. He continued his African explorations from 1908 until 1910, ending in Chad where local people killed him. He published From the Niger to the Nile in two volumes in 1907. Alexander studied birdlife across a large part of West Africa and is also commemorated in the common names of two birds: Alexander’s Akalat Sheppardia poensis and Alexander’s Swift Apus alexandri. The squirrel and mongoose are found in DRC (Zaire) and Uganda.

Alexandra

Gebe Cuscus Phalanger alexandrae Flannery and Boeadi, 1995

Dr. Alexandra Szalay is an Australian anthropologist. In private life she is Mrs. Flannery and so was commemorated by her husband in the name of this cuscus, which is found on the island of Gebe (North Moluccas, Indonesia).

Alfaro

Alfaro’s Rice Rat Oryzomys alfaroi J. A. Allen, 1891

Alfaro’s Pygmy Squirrel Microsciurus alfari J. A. Allen, 1895 [Alt. Central American Dwarf Squirrel]

Alfaro’s Rice Water Rat Sigmodontomys alfari J. A. Allen, 1897 [Alt. Cana Rice Rat]

Dr. Don Anastasio Alfaro (1865–1951) was an archeologist, geologist, ethnologist, zoologist, and famous Costa Rican writer. From a young age he collected birds, insects, minerals, and plants. He took his first degree at the University of Santo Tomás in 1883. In 1885 he asked the President of Costa Rica to create a National Museum, and then he dedicated much of his life to it, becoming Director not long after it was established in 1887. He spent his life teaching and exploring as well as continuing to collect, thereby discovering a number of new taxa that carry his name. He wrote a number of books including one on Costa Rican mammals, but he also wrote poetry. He was much admired throughout Europe and the Americas and corresponded with all the leading naturalists of his day. He is also commemorated in the names of other taxa, from ants, such as Cephalotes alfaroi and Pheidole alfaroi, to amphibians such as Oedipina alfaroi. The rice rat is found from eastern Mexico to northwest Ecuador; the squirrel from southern Nicaragua to northern Colombia; and the water rat from eastern Honduras to Colombia and northwest Venezuela.

Allen, G. M.

Allen’s Big-eared Bat Idionycteris phyllotis G. M. Allen, 1916

Professor Dr. Glover Morrill Allen (1879–1942) was an American collector, curator, editor, librarian, mammalogist, ornithologist, scientist, taxonomist, teacher, and writer. Between 1901 and 1927 he was Librarian at the Boston Society of Natural History. In 1907 he was hired to oversee the mammal collection at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, having taken his Ph.D. there in 1904. He became Curator of Mammals in 1925, staying in that post until 1938 and then becoming Professor of Zoology, in which capacity he served until his death in 1942. One of his collaborators on Narrative of a Trip to Bahamas (1904) was Thomas Barbour, whom he had met at Harvard and who went on to become Director of the Museum in 1927. Allen was keen on all vertebrates, particularly birds (he edited The Auk from 1939 to 1942) and mammals (he was President of the American Society of Mammalogists from 1927 until 1929). He took part in the Harvard African expedition to Liberia in 1926, as well as collecting trips to the Bahamas in 1903, Labrador in 1906, East Africa in 1909, the West Indies in 1910, Africa again in 1912 and 1926, Brazil in 1929, and Australia in 1931. He wrote a great many scientific papers and articles and a number of books. Early works include Mammals of the West Indies (1911). Later works include the two-volume Mammals of China and Mongolia, published between 1938 and 1940. His Bats of 1939 is considered a classic. His last book, Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere, was published posthumously. The bat is found from southern Utah and southern Nevada, USA, to central Mexico. See also Glover and Gloverallen.

Allen, H.

Allen’s Yellow Bat Rhogeessa alleni Thomas, 1892

Dr. Harrison Allen (1841–1897) was regarded by Thomas as the chief authority on North-American bats, and so he named the bat in Allen’s honor. Allen was a physician who graduated in Philadelphia in 1861 and spent the years 1862 to 1865 as a surgeon in the U.S. Army during the American Civil War. After the war he was made Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Medical Zoology at Pennsylvania University Medical School in Philadelphia. In 1875 he transferred to the Chair of Physiology and stayed in that post until 1895. His interest in bats arose as a result of a chance meeting in 1861 with Spencer Fullerton Baird, who noticed the young Allen reading, in translation, the chapter on bats in Cuvier’s Regne animal—instead of what he should have been doing, revising for his final medical exams. Baird advised him to forget the book and look at the specimens instead and went on to use his influence to have Allen’s military postings to be as convenient as possible for pursuing his natural history studies at the Smithsonian. Allen’s best-known work on a zoological subject is A Monograph of the Bats of North America, which appeared in 1893. The bat is endemic to Mexico.

Allen, J. A.

Allen’s Olingo Bassaricyon alleni Thomas, 1880

Round-tailed Muskrat Neofiber alleni True, 1884

Antelope Jackrabbit Lepus alleni Mearns, 1890

Allen’s Woodrat Hodomys alleni Merriam, 1892

Allen’s Squirrel Sciurus alleni Nelson, 1898

Allen’s Cotton Rat Sigmodon alleni Bailey, 1902

Allen’s Mastiff Bat Molossus sinaloae J. A. Allen, 1906

Allen’s Swamp Monkey Allenopithecus nigroviridis Pocock, 1907

Allen’s Round-eared Bat Lophostoma carrikeri J. A. Allen, 1910 [Alt. Carriker’s Round-eared Bat]

Allen’s Hutia Isolobodon portoricensis J. A. Allen, 1916 extinct

Allen’s Striped Bat Glauconycteris alboguttatus J. A. Allen, 1917

Joel Asaph Allen (1838–1921) was an America zoologist with interests in both mammals and birds. He studied under Agassiz and accompanied him to Brazil in 1865. He made a number of field trips in North America and in 1873 became chief of an expedition sent out by the Northern Pacific Railroad. He became an assistant in ornithology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1870. In 1885 he became Curator of the Department of Mammals and Birds in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, a post he held until his death in 1921. He wrote many scientific papers and edited the ornithological journal The Auk. Allen also wrote a number of monographs, including one with Dr. Elliott Coues. He organized the American Ornithologists’ Union with Coues and Brewster, serving as its first President, and was also a founding member of the National Audubon Society. In addition to naming many species, he made important studies on geographic variation relative to climate. Allen’s recognition of variation within populations and intergradation across geographic gradients helped to overturn the typological species concept current in the mid-1800s, setting out the principle that intergrading populations should be treated as subspecies instead of separate species. This idea led to the widespread adoption of trinomials by American zoologists, a practice that Allen helped to spread through his editorship of The Auk and through the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) code of nomenclature. He established what was later called Allen’s rule, the observation that animals in cold climates had small extremities: so, for example, from the northern Arctic Hare (Lepus arcticus) through the more southerly Antelope Jackrabbit (L. alleni), members of the genus show progressively longer extremities (legs and ears) and leaner bodies. The olingo is found in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The muskrat is found in Florida and extreme southeast Georgia, USA. The jackrabbit occurs in southern Arizona and northwest Mexico. The woodrat and the cotton rat are both found in western Mexico, while the squirrel is endemic to northeast Mexico. The mastiff bat occurs from Mexico south to Suriname and Trinidad, and the round-eared bat in northern South America. The striped bat is known from DRC (Zaire) and Cameroon. The swamp monkey dwells in riparian forests along the Congo River and its tributaries. The hutia, from Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, is generally regarded as extinct, although some authorities believe that populations may yet persist and await rediscovery.

Allen, W. A.

Allen’s Squirrel Galago Galago alleni Waterhouse, 1838 [Alt. Allen’s Bushbaby; Syn. Galagoides alleni]

Allen’s Wood Mouse Hylomyscus alleni Waterhouse, 1838

Rear Admiral William Allen (1793–1864) was an English naval officer who was involved in fighting the African slave trade. He led three expeditions up the Niger River in West Africa, two in 1832 and one in 1841, where he collected the type specimen of a bird that commemorates his name, Allen’s Gallinule Porphyrio alleni. The type specimens of both mammals were collected on the island of Fernando Pó (now Bioko). The galago is endemic to the island, with similar populations found from southeast Nigeria to Gabon and the Congo Republic now being regarded as separate species. The wood mouse also occurs on the West African mainland, from Guinea east to Gabon and the Central African Republic.

Allenby

Allenby’s Gerbil Gerbillus allenbyi Thomas, 1918

Field Marshall Sir Edmund Henry Hynman, Viscount Allenby of Megiddo (1861–1936), was a career soldier. He served in Africa before and during the Boer War. He went on to command the Cavalry Division, the Cavalry Corps, V Corps, and the Third Army on the Western Front. From June 1917 he was Commander in Chief, Egyptian Expeditionary Force. He is most famous for capturing Jerusalem from Turkish occupation in December 1917. He is also known to be the only Christian General to have succeeded in capturing both Jerusalem and the strategic fortress of Acre—a feat that was beyond the early Crusaders such as Richard Coeur-de-Lion and St. Louis. Thomas was commemorating what the western world of the time saw as a great victory; his original description of the gerbil reflects the chauvinist sentiments of his era. He wrote, I have named it in honour of the general to whose forces the country where it occurs (i.e. Palestine) owes release from the barbarian domination under which it has suffered for so many centuries. Allenby was also a keen ornithologist, extremely interested in bird migration, and among his staff in Palestine and Egypt toward the end of and immediately after WW1 was Richard Meinertzhagen. The two men are known to have been on very good terms and remained friends, even after Meinertzhagen was sacked by Allenby. The gerbil is endemic to Israel, though it may be conspecific with the more widespread Gerbil-lus andersoni.

Aloysius

Duke of Abruzzi’s Free-tailed Bat Chaerephon aloysiisabaudiae Festa, 1907

The binomial aloysiisabaudiae is just a Latinized way of saying Luigi of Sabaudia: Aloysius is the Latin for Luigi, and the House of Savoy (sometime Kings of Italy) traced its descent from the medieval Counts of Sabaudia. See Duke of Abruzzi for biographical details.

Alston

Alston’s Brown Mouse Scotinomys teguina Alston, 1877

Alston’s Cotton Rat Sigmodon alstoni Thomas, 1881

Mexican Volcano Mouse Neotomodon alstoni Merriam, 1898

Alston’s Woolly Mouse-Opossum Micoureus alstoni J. A. Allen, 1900 [Alt. Alston’s Opossum; formerly Marmosa alstoni]

Edward Richard Alston F.Z.S. (1845–1881) was Secretary of the Linnean Society. He wrote a number of scientific papers, including, with C. Danford, On the Mammals of Asia Minor, which appeared in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London in 1877, and at least one longer work, Biologia Centrali-American: Mammalia, published between 1878 and 1882. In 1871 he visited Norway and, in 1872, Archangel in Russia. He was collecting in Central America, particularly Guatemala and Belize, from 1879 until 1881. The brown mouse occurs from southern Mexico to western Panama. The cotton rat is found from northeast Colombia to Suriname and northern Brazil. The volcano mouse is confined to central Mexico. The mouse-opossum is found from Belize south to Colombia.

Ammon

Argali Ovis ammon Linnaeus, 1758

Ammon was an Egyptian god usually depicted as a human with a ram’s head—an appropriate deity to use for this sheep, which is found in central Asia, with scattered populations from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to Tibet, Mongolia, and southern Siberia.

Anak

Giant Naked-tailed Rat Uromys anak Thomas, 1907

Thomas sometimes used biblical or mythological names but did not explain why. Such is the case with Uromys anak, but we can be fairly sure that the large size of this rat led him to name it after Anak, the biblical progenitor of the giants, as stated in Numbers 13.33: And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. It is possible that Thomas may have had an actual man in mind, as the Victorians loved freak shows, and very tall men would be exhibited as giants. For instance, Joseph Brice, a Frenchman who claimed to be 244 cm (8 feet) tall (but was probably a bit shorter) exhibited himself at St. James Hall in Piccadilly in 1865 as Anak, King of the Anakims, or the Giant of Giants. The rat comes from the highlands of New Guinea.

Anchieta

Anchieta’s Antelope Cephalophus (melanorheus) anchietae Bocage, 1878 [Alt. Angolan Blue Duiker; now Cephalophus monticola anchietae]

José (Alberto) de (Oliveira) Anchieta (1832–1897) was an independent Portuguese naturalist and collector. The common name Anchieta’s Antelope is seldom used nowadays, as this taxon is regarded as the Angolan subspecies of the Blue Duiker. See D’Anchieta for biographical details and other eponymous species.

Andersen

Andersen’s Bare-backed Fruit Bat Dobsonia anderseni Thomas, 1904

Andersen’s Horseshoe Bat Rhinolophus anderseni Cabrera, 1909

Andersen’s Fruit-eating Bat Artibeus anderseni Osgood, 1916

Dr. Knud Andersen (d. 1918) was a Danish zoologist specializing in Chiroptera (bats). He was employed by the British Museum of Natural History from 1904 but mysteriously disappeared in 1918 and is presumed to have died then. He collected in the Pacific in the 1900s and in Queensland in 1912. He wrote Catalogue of the Chiroptera in the Collection of the British Museum, published in 1912, which remains the most comprehensive treatment of the Megachiroptera, and he also published a number of descriptions of new species. The bare-backed bat is found in the Bismarck Archipelago (Papua New Guinea). The horseshoe bat occurs in the Philippines and the fruit-eating bat in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and western Brazil. See also Canut.

Anderson, J.

Anderson’s Squirrel Callosciurus quinquestriatus Anderson, 1871

Anderson’s Shrew Suncus stoliczkanus Anderson, 1877

Anderson’s Gerbil Gerbillus andersoni de Winton, 1902

Professor Dr. John Anderson F.R.S. (1833–1900) was a Scottish naturalist who was Professor of Natural History at Free Church College in Edinburgh. He became Curator of the Indian Museum in Calcutta in 1865 and collected for the trustees. He went on scientific expeditions to Yunnan in 1867, to Burma between 1875 and 1876, and to the Mergui Archipelago between 1881 and 1882. In 1885 he became Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Calcutta Medical School, then returned to London in 1886. He wrote Guide to the Calcutta Zoological Gardens and began another work, Zoology of Egypt—Mammalia, which was completed by de Winton and published in 1902. The squirrel is found in northeast Myanmar and western Yunnan (China). The shrew occurs in deserts and arid country in Pakistan, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. The gerbil is found in coastal areas of North Africa from Tunisia to Sinai.

Anderson, M. P.

Anderson’s Red-backed Vole Myodes andersoni Thomas, 1905 [Alt. Japanese Red-backed Vole; Syn. Phaulomys andersoni]

Anderson’s Shrew-Mole Uropsilus andersoni Thomas, 1911

Anderson’s White-bellied Rat Niviventer andersoni Thomas, 1911

Anderson’s Four-eyed Opossum Philander andersoni Osgood, 1913 [Alt. Black Four-eyed Opossum]

Malcolm Playfair Anderson (1879–1919) was born in Indianapolis but was educated at secondary level in Germany, returning to the USA to study zoology at Stanford University and graduating in 1904. From the age of 15 he took part in collecting expeditions to Arizona, Alaska, and California. In 1901 he joined the Cooper Ornithological Club and wrote a number of articles on ornithology, yet did not confine himself to that subject. In 1904 he was chosen to conduct the Duke of Bedford’s Exploration of Eastern Asia for the Zoological Society of London; he took photographs and extensive notes on the collections and wrote several short stories about the people with whom he lived and worked in the Orient. He was again in western China in 1909 and 1910. In 1912 he found the type specimen of the four-eyed opossum during a trip to Peru with Osgood. He died in 1919 after falling from scaffolding at the shipyards in Oakland, California. The vole is endemic to Honshu, Japan, and the shrew-mole to Sichuan, China. The rat dwells in the highlands of central and southern China. The opossum’s range extends from Peru to western Brazil and southern Venezuela.

Anderson, S.

Anderson’s Mouse-Opossum Marmosa andersoni Pine, 1972 [Alt. Heavy-browed Mouse-Opossum]

Anderson’s Rice Rat Cerradomys andersoni Brooks et al., 2004

Anderson’s Oldfield Mouse Thomasomys andersoni Salazar-Bravo and Yates, 2007

Sydney Anderson is an American mammalo-gist who is Emeritus Curator of Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History. He has devoted his life to the study of the mammals of Bolivia and has written widely on the subject, in books such as Mammals of Bolivia, Taxonomy and Distribution (1997) and articles published in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. He was President of the American Society of Mammalogists between 1974 and 1976. The mouse-opossum is critically endangered and occupies a small range in southern Peru. The rice rat comes from the Cerrado region of Brazil. This species may be a junior synonym of Cerradomys scotti, named two years earlier. The oldfield mouse is found on the eastern slopes of the central Bolivian Andes.

Andrews

Andrews’ Beaked Whale Mesoplodon bowdoini Andrews, 1908 [Alt. Bowdoin’s Beaked Whale]

Andrews’ Hill Rat Bunomys andrewsi J. A. Allen, 1911

Andrews’ Three-toed Jerboa Stylodipus andrewsi J. A. Allen, 1925

Roy Chapman Andrews (1884–1960) was a larger-than-life American who became an explorer, collector, and curator. Many believe him to have been the real-life model for the hero of the Indiana Jones movies. He always maintained that from his earliest childhood he had a desire for travel and adventure. I was born to be an explorer, he wrote in 1935 in The Business of Exploring. There was never any decision to make. I couldn’t do anything else and be happy. He said too that his only ambition was to work at the American Museum of Natural History. He first worked as a taxidermist. After graduating in 1906 he went to New York City and applied for a job at the museum. The Director told him there were no jobs, but Andrews persisted, saying You have to have somebody to scrub floors, don’t you? The Director took him on, and from this humble beginning he went on to become the museum’s most famous explorer. As a taxidermist he developed an interest in whales and traveled to Alaska, Japan, Korea, and China to collect various marine mammals. (We do not know if he ever tried to combine his interests in whales with his skills as a taxidermist.) From 1909 to 1910 he was naturalist on the USS Albatross voyage to the Dutch East Indies. From 1921 to 1923 he led an expedition to China and Outer Mongolia, where he collected both live specimens and fossils, including the first eggs to be positively identified as those of a dinosaur. He continued to make further expeditions over a number of years until 1930. He returned to the USA and four years later became Director of the museum. He retired in 1942, moved to California, and spent the rest of his life writing about his exploits in works including an autobiography, Under a Lucky Star. The jerboa is found in Mongolia and northern China, and the rat on the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi and Butung. The whale is recorded mainly in the cold-temperate waters off southern Australia and New Zealand.

Angas

Nyala Tragelaphus angasii Gray, 1849

George Francis (French) Angas (1822–1886) was an English explorer, zoologist, and artist. He painted African animals as well as other subjects. He certainly traveled widely, having painted in New Zealand in 1844, Australia in 1846, and South Africa in 1847. He published The Kafirs Illustrated in 1849. He served as Secretary of the Australian Museum, Sydney, in the 1850s. His Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand was published in 1847 in two volumes with numerous illustrations. He was also a noted conchologist, and several molluscs were named after him, including the cone shell Conus angasi. The nyala is found in southern Malawi, Mozambique, eastern Zimbabwe, Swaziland, and KwaZulu-Natal and eastern Transvaal (South Africa).

Anita

Anita’s Leaf-eared Mouse Phyllotis anitae Jayat, D’Elía, Pardiñas, and Namen, 2007

Anita Kelley Pearson (dates not found) was the wife of Oliver Payne Pearson (q.v.), whom she married in 1944. She was active in the same fields of zoology as her husband and traveled widely with him; often they were also accompanied by their young children. The mouse comes from the province of Tucuman, northwest Argentina.

Annandale

Annandale’s Rat Rattus annandalei Bonhote, 1903

Dr. (Thomas) Nelson Annandale (1876–1924) was a zoologist who was Director of the Indian Museum during the British Raj. He published a number of scientific papers during the 1900s through the 1920s—for example, in 1915, Fauna of the Chilka Lake: Mammals, Reptiles and Batrachians. He was instrumental in separating out a zoological survey (as opposed to one combined with anthropology) and undertook several expeditions. Most notable of these was the Annandale-Robinson expedition, which collected the type specimen of the rat, in Malaya from 1901 to 1902. The rat is found on the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, eastern Sumatra, and the islands of Padang and Rupat off the Sumatran coast.

Ansell, P. D. H.

Ansell’s Shrew Crocidura ansellorum Hutterer and Dippenaar, 1987

P. D. H. Ansell is the son of W. F. H. Ansell (see below), and it was he who collected the type specimen of the shrew in Zambia, although the species is named after both father and son (ansellorum means of the Ansells). He has written a number of articles, including More Light on the Problem of Hartebeest Calves (1970) and, with his father, Mammals of the Northeastern Montane Areas of Zambia (1973).

Ansell, W. F. H.

Ansell’s Wood Mouse Hylomyscus anselli Bishop, 1979

Ansell’s Shrew Crocidura ansellorum Hutterer and Dippenaar, 1987

Ansell’s Mole-Rat Fukomys anselli Burda et al., 1999 [Alt. Zambian Mole-Rat; formerly Cryptomys anselli]

Ansell’s Epauletted Fruit Bat Epomophorus anselli Bergmans and Van Strien, 2004

Upemba Lechwe Kobus anselli Cotterill, 2005

Dr. William Frank Harding Ansell (1923–1996) was a zoologist who studied the mammals of southeast Africa. He obtained his Ph.D. at Liverpool University in 1960 and in the same year was appointed as Provincial Game Officer in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He wrote Mammals of Northern Rhodesia (1960), The Mammals of Zambia (1978), and African Mammals (1989), and co-wrote Mammals of Malawi (1988). He studied south-central African lechwe antelopes intensively throughout the 1960s. He is also commemorated in the scientific name of a bird,