Edouard Louis Trouessart

Édouard Louis Trouessart (picture by L. Schützenberger )

Édouard Louis Trouessart (born August 25, 1842 in Angers ; died June 30, 1927 in Paris ) was a French zoologist and professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle . Above all for mammalogy , especially the systematics of mammals , he provided central work and described a number of taxa of mammals, most of which have survived to this day.

life and work

Trouessart was born in Angers in western France in 1842 , his father was a professor of physics at the University of Poitiers . Édouard Louis went to school in Angers and then studied medicine in Poitiers . He switched to the military medical college in Strasbourg , but probably had to give up this path due to an illness. He moved again to Poitiers, where he became an assistant in the natural science faculty in 1864 and again studied medicine and natural sciences. In 1870 he received his doctorate in Poitiers .

In the Franco-Prussian War from 1870 to 1871 he served in the French army, where he probably reached the rank of major of the 36th “corps mobiles de la Vienne” and served in the defense of Paris . After the war he returned to his home region and worked as a doctor in Villevêque for old and poor people. In addition to his medical work, he dealt with natural history and was a regular visitor to the Natural History Museum of Angers, in addition, he published his first works on natural history.

Édouard Louis Trouessart (Olivier Couffon, 1906)

From 1882 to 1885 he worked at the museum in Angers as director and at the same time became professor of natural history. He took over the museum's collection in a disorganized and untidy state and began collecting it together with Édouard Aubert (butterflies), Joseph Gallois (beetle) and Dr. Clean up and rearrange Lieutaud (mammals). He himself took over the collections of mineralogy, paleontology and ornithology and donated his own private collection to the museum, at the same time increasing it with donations from the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris and other new acquisitions as well as the expansion of the library and preparation materials. On January 5, 1885, he resigned after he was denied public funding for the necessary space in the museum and was in dispute with the regional administration. During his time in Angers he continued to publish and also published the first descriptions of bats and shrews from his own collection.

In 1885 he went to Paris and worked as a doctor, he was also a regular visitor to the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle . The director Alphonse Milne-Edwards took him on in the department for birds and mammals, which was headed before him by the well-known zoologists Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire . He gave him a job as a volunteer and assistant, where he worked on various projects on systematics and taxonomy, including primates . Milne-Edwards assistant Émile Oustalet was head of the department of anatomical zoology at this time. He worked in the Department of Birds and Mammals from 1873 and became head of this department in 1900. Oustalet, however, mainly concentrated on ornithology and rarely worked with Trouessart, with whom he did not publish any publications. After Oustalet's death in 1905, Trouessart was appointed professor at the museum in 1906 and worked as head of the mammals and birds department until 1926 when he was forced to resign at the age of 84. Trouessart died a year later, in 1927. He was succeeded by Édouard Bourdelle (1876–1960), who also wrote his obituary .

meaning

Edouard-Louis Trouessart (1842–1927) was one of the central figures of early mammalogical research and, as early as the beginning of the 20th century, he combined systematic-zoological work with paleontological and biogeographical findings. Especially his 1910 published monograph on the mammals of Europe, Conspectus Mammalium Europeae: Faune of Mammifères d'Europe , is common with the 1912 by the American Gerrit Smith Miller published Catalog of the Mammals of Western Europe (Europe exclusive of Russia) in the Collection of the British Museum from 1912 as one of the key publications of European mammal research. In contrast to Miller, Trouessart looked at the entire European continent up to the Urals .

During his scientific career he published 266 scientific and popular science articles and described about 30 new genera , species and subspecies of mammals, which he has validly named to this day. With his works he influenced the mammalogical standard literature up to the modern age. His Catalogus mammalium tam viventium quam fossilium (a calalog of recent and fossil mammals), which was revised three times, laid the basis for modern standard works such as the Classification of Mammals Above the Species Level by Simpson, McKenna and Bell and Mammal Species of the World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference by Wilson and Reeder (2005).

Many of the mammalian taxa that Trouessart described are still valid today:

order	genus	Species / subspecies	German name	year	Initial description / note	image
Diprotodontia	Wallabia		Swamp Wallabies	1905	Catalogus mammalium tam viventium quam fossilium. Quinennale supplementum fasc. 3-4. R. Friedländer & Sohn, Berlin, pp. 547-929.
Insect eater	Neotetracus		Shrew hedgehog	1909
Insect eater	Neotetracus	Neotetracus sinensis	Shrew hedgehog	1909
Insect eater	Paraechinus		Desert hedgehog	1879
Primates	Nycticebus	Nycticebus coucang menagensis	Borneo slow lorikeet	1897
Primates	Erythrocebus		Hussar monkey	1897
Primates	Piliocolobus	Piliocolobus foai oustaleti	Central African colobus monkey	1906
Odd-toed ungulates	Equus	Equus burchellii zambeziensis	Burchell's zebra , Damara zebra	1898	According to the current phylogenetic system, Equus burchelli is considered to be a subspecies Equus quagga burchelli of the plains zebra.
Artifacts	Odocoileus	Odocoileus virginianus ustus	White-tailed deer	1910
Artifacts	Cephalophus	Cephalophus natalensis vassei	Red duiker	1906
Bats	Notopteris	Notopteris neocaledonica		1908
Bats	Chaerephon	Chaerephon major		1897
Bats	Myotis	Myotis septentrionalis		1897
Bats	Epomophorus	Epomophorus gambianus pousarguesi	Gambian epaulette bat	1904
Bats	Triaenops	Triaenops furculus		1906	Now part of the newly established genus Paratriaenops as Paratriaenops furculus
Rodents	Lemniscomys		Striped grass mice	1880
Rodents	Gerbillus	Gerbillus latastei	Lataste gerbil	1903
Rodents	Praomys	Praomys morio		1880
Rodents	Pseudomys	Pseudomys higginsi		1897
Rodents	Trichomys			1880
Rodents	Sciurus	Sciurus vulgaris arcticus		1880
Rodents	Tamiasciurus		Red squirrel	1880	Révision du genre écureuil (Sciurus). Le Naturaliste, 1880, pp. 290-315 (translated into Bull. Geol. Geogr. Surv. VI: 301).
Rodents	Nannosciurus		Brown miniature squirrel	1880	Révision du genre écureuil (Sciurus). Le Naturaliste, 1880, pp. 290-315 (translated into Bull. Geol. Geogr. Surv. VI: 301).
Rodents	Funisciurus		Redshank squirrel	1880	Révision du genre écureuil (Sciurus). Le Naturaliste, 1880, pp. 290-315 (translated into Bull. Geol. Geogr. Surv. VI: 301).
Rodents	Heliosciurus		Sun squirrel	1880	Révision du genre écureuil (Sciurus). Le Naturaliste, 1880, pp. 290-315 (translated into Bull. Geol. Geogr. Surv. VI: 301).
Rodents	Paraxerus	Paraxerus ochraceus affinis	Ocher bush squirrel	1897
Rodents	Eutamias			1880	Usually not viewed as a separate genus, but as a sub-genus of Tamias .
Rodents	Megalomys		Caribbean giant rice rats	1881
Primates		Colobus oustaleti	Oustalet colobus monkey	1906
Primates		Trachypithecus poliocephalus	Cat-ba langur	1911
Rabbit-like	Oryctolagus	Oryctolagus cuniculus brachyotus	Wild rabbit	1917

Although Trouessart mainly focused on his research and publications and cared little about academic politics, he was active in various scientific societies. He was Vice President (1899-1900) and later President (1901) of the French Zoological Society, corresponded with Zoological Society (London) and the Veneto-Trentino Science Society (Padova), was Vice President (1906) of the Biological Society of France and President of the Section mammalogy of the Société Nationale d'Acclimatation de France .

Fonts

Trouessart published 266 scientific articles and works during his scientific career, including

• Histoire Naturelle de la France. 2nd part: Mammifères. Edition Deyrolle, Paris 1884.
• Catalog des mammifères vivants et fossiles. 1878-1884.
  • I. Primates. In: Rev. Magas. Zool. 3è ser. T.VI, 1878, pp. 108-140, 162-169.
  • II. Chiroptera. In: Rev. Magas. Zool. 3è ser. T.VI, 1878, pp. 201-254.
  • III. Insectivora. In: Rev. Mag. Zool. 3è ser. 7, 1879, pp. 219-285.
  • IV Rodentia. In: Bull. Soc. Et. Sci. Angers. 10, 1880, pp. 58-212.
  • Fasc. IV Carnivores (Carnivora). In: Bull. Soc. Et. Sci. Angers. supplément à l'année 14, 1884, pp. 1–108.

• Conspectus Mammalium Europeae: Fauns des Mammifères d'Europe. 1910.

supporting documents

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Christiane Denys, Cécile Callou, Benoît Mellier: The contribution of Edouard-Louis Trouessart to mammalogy. In: Mammalia. 76 (4), October 2012, pp. 355-364. doi: 10.1515 / mammalia-2011-0131 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Boris Kryštufek, Jonathan L. Dunnum: On the history of European mammalogy. Mammalia. 76 (4), October 2012, pp. 351-353. doi: 10.1515 / mammalia-2012-0077 .
3. ↑ Don E. Wilson , DeeAnn M. Reeder (Ed.): Mammal Species of the World . A taxonomic and geographic Reference. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 2005, ISBN 0-8018-8221-4 .
4. ^ Colin P. Groves, CH Bell: New investigations on the taxonomy of the zebras genus Equus, subgenus Hippotigris. In: Mammalian Biology. 69 (3), 2004, pp. 182-196.
5. ↑ Petr Benda, Peter Vallo: Taxonomic revision of the genus Triaenops (Chiroptera: Hipposideridae) with description of a new species from southern Arabia and definitions of a new genus and tribe. (= Folia Zoologica. 58, Monograph 1). 2009, pp. 1-45.

literature

• Christiane Denys, Cécile Callou, Benoît Mellier: The contribution of Edouard-Louis Trouessart to mammalogy. In: Mammalia. 76 (4), October 2012, pp. 355-364. doi: 10.1515 / mammalia-2011-0131

Web links

Commons : Édouard Louis Trouessart  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Édouard Louis Trouessart in the catalog of the German National Library