Donovan Reginald Rosevear

Donovan Reginald Rosevear (born November 28, 1900 in Chelsea , † January 17, 1986 ) was a British forest manager and mammaloge .

Life

After graduating from the Bedford School Rosevear became in 1923 the Bachelor of Arts and forestry diploma at Christ's College of the University of Cambridge . In 1924 he moved to Nigeria , where he joined the Colonial Forest Service. For the first 20 years of his career, Rosevear worked in the southeastern provinces of Nigeria and the Cameroons . In addition to his job, Rosevear was an avid nature watcher studying the fauna and flora of West Africa .

Rosevear was a strong supporter of the Nigerian Field Society (NFS), founded in 1930 by Frank Bridges. He published numerous articles in The Nigerian Field , the journal of the Nigerian Field Society, and was vice president of that society from 1947 to 1976.

In 1944 Rosevear moved to Ibadan and in 1951 he became General Forest Inspector in Lagos . In 1954 he finished active forestry and returned to Great Britain. In London, he volunteered at the Natural History Museum , where he worked for more than 20 years with the support of the Wellcome Trust and the Leverhulme Trust .

From 1956 to 1960 he was a panel member of the Fauna and Flora Preservation Society .

Rosevear compiled a large collection of small mammals from West Africa and published a number of scientific books on mammals including A Checklist and Atlas of Nigerian Mammals (1953), The Bats of West Africa (1965), The Rodents of West Africa (1969) and The Carnivores of West Africa (1974).

Honors and Dedication Names

In 1954 Rosevear was named Commander of the British Empire (CBE). In 1971 he received the Stamford Raffles Award from the Zoological Society of London . In 1978 he was awarded the HH Bloomer Award from the Linnean Society of London . In 1980 Rosevear's grass mouse ( Lemniscomys roseveari ) from Zambia was named in honor of Donovan Rosevear , in 1997 Rosevears brush- haired mouse ( Lophuromys roseveari ) from Cameroon and in 2013 the smooth-nosed species Neoromicia roseveari from Liberia and Guinea .

literature

• Anonymous: Obituary Mr. Donovan Rosevear. Studies of West African fauna , The Times, Jan. 18, 1986, p. 10
• "Rosevear." In: Bo Beolens, Michael Grayson, Michael Watkins: The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009; P. 349; ISBN 978-0-8018-9304-9 .

Web links

• Papers of Donovan Reginald Rosevear (1900–1986) (with short biography)