Dominic Serventy

Dominic Louis Serventy (born March 28, 1904 in Kalgoorlie , Western Australia , † August 8, 1988 in Perth , Western Australia) was an Australian ornithologist and conservationist . He was interested in all aspects of ornithology, from biogeography and speciation through the breeding season to general biology, and he had a long-term influence on bird protection.

Life

Serventy was the eldest of eight children of Vincent (Victor) and Antica (Annie) Serventy, née Gabelich. His parents were immigrants from Croatia . Serventy attended elementary schools in Armadale and Gosnells, as well as the Perth Boys' School and the Perth Modern School in Perth. He spent much of his childhood and youth in Maddington. He made his first professional experience as a journalist, first with the Australian United Press and then with the daily newspaper The West Australian .

An early friendship with Ludwig Glauert , then director of the Western Australian Museum , led him to become an ornithologist. Otto Lipfert , the taxidermist of the museum, the production taught him of bird skins . With several leading naturalists he founded the Western Australian Naturalists' Club in 1924, where he served as first secretary and treasurer and which he renewed after the Second World War with his brother Vincent and sister Lucy. From 1926 to 1931 he was Secretary General of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union.

Serventy, who enrolled part-time at the University of Western Australia in 1928 , earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology in 1931 with first class honors. In 1931 he received a 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, a scholarship , it enabled him at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge to study, where he in 1933 with a thesis on marine invertebrates for Ph.D. received his doctorate. In March 1934 he married Gertrude Lange, of German descent, in the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge. He then returned to Perth, where he became an assistant lecturer in zoology at the University of Western Australia.

In 1937 Serventy became a research fellow at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR, forerunner of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization ), Fisheries Division, in Cronulla , New South Wales . He visited marine laboratories in Europe and the United States, focusing on tuna and other marine fish. These visits also gave him the opportunity to make new ornithological contacts, including with Gregory Mathews , with whom he went on many excursions. In 1941 Serventy published the brochure The Australian Thunas (1941), which was designed to educate fishermen and the canning industry of the department's research. He has also written scientific articles on tuna in the Journal of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and other journals. In 1939 he found a connection between the number of shearwaters and the activity of the southern bluefin tuna . When the Fisheries Department of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research was moved to Perth in 1943, he set up a laboratory there and began research in Western Australian waters. In 1947 he studied the short-tailed shearwaters ( Puffinus tenuirostris ) colonies in Bass Strait , in response to complaints from local bird and egg collectors that the population was declining. From 1951 to 1969, Serventy was the Operations Director in the Wildlife Survey Section of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. He set up wildlife laboratories in Nedlands and later in Helena Valley . During this time he was in contact with numerous well-known ornithologists, including Klaus Immelmann , Donald S. Farner , Mary Gillham , Pat Hall and other members of the Harold Hall expeditions. He founded the Yolla Research Station on Fisher Island and conducted studies of the short-tailed shearwater population biology for the next 30 years . He also undertook biannual trips (from November to December and February to March), according to Flinders Iceland , where he thousands of shearwaters, lasting under a 20-year biological study, individually ringed . This work contains detailed data on reproduction, population dynamics, migration, life expectancy, behavior and nutrition of the tubular noses . The ringing data also achieved the goal of establishing catch quotas for the commercial gathering of young birds.

Serventy described in 1943 the subspecies Puffinus assimilis haurakiensis the dwarf shearwater . He produced extensive sets of bird distribution maps and published in collaboration with Hubert Massey Whittell the work Birds of Western Australia , of which five editions appeared between 1948 and 1976. In 1971 he edited the Handbook of Australian Seabirds with Vincent Serventy and John Warham .

Serventy was active in many societies, in particular in the Western Australian Naturalists' Club, whose magazine The Western Australian Naturalist he published from 1947 to 1980. From the beginning, he inspired and encouraged field ornithologists to develop research projects that were featured in this journal. From 1947 to 1949 he was President of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union , which elected him a Fellow in 1952. He was a corresponding member of the British Ornithologists 'Union , the German Ornithologists Society , the South African Ornithological Society , the Aves Argentinas-Asociación Ornitológica del Plata (Argentina), the American Ornithologists' Union and the Société ornithologique de France . From 1966 to 1978 he was a member of the standing executive committee of the International Ornithological Congress .

Honors and Dedication Names

Serventy received the Australian Natural History Medallion from the Royal Society of Victoria in 1956 , the Royal Society of Tasmania Medal in 1970 and the Royal Society of Western Australia Medal in 1979. In 1970 he became an honorary member of the American Ornithologists' Union. In 1972 he was honored by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands with the Order of the Golden Ark in the knight class. In 1991 the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (now Birdlife Australia) donated the DL Serventy Medal, which is awarded for an outstanding work on the Australasian avifauna.

Dominic Serventy is the scientific name of the Australian Skinkart Ctenotus serventyi honored. The epithet of the extinct cormorant species Microcarbo serventyorum , which was first described by Gerard Frederick van Tets in 1994 , refers to Dominic and his brother Vincent.

literature

• Stephen John James Frank Davies: Obituary Dr Dominic Louis Serventy (1904-1988) Ibis 131 (3), 1989, pp. 448-450
• James Allen Keast: Dr Dominic Louis Serventy , Emu 89 (3), 1989, pp. 183-184 doi : 10.1071 / MU9890183
• Rica Erickson: Serventy, Dominic Louis (1904-1988). Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18, (MUP), 2012

Web links

• Biographical entry on Birdlife Australia
• Biographical entry in the Encyclopedia of Australian Science
• Literature by and about Dominic Serventy in the WorldCat bibliographic database