Guy Chester Shortridge

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Guy Chester Shortridge (born June 21, 1880 in Honiton , Devon , † January 12, 1949 in King William's Town , South Africa ) was a British zoologist and museum director.

Life

Shortridge was the son of country doctor Thomas W. Shortridge and his wife Louisa Chester. Shortridge developed an interest in natural history from an early age. During the Second Boer War (1899-1902) he served in the South African police force. Soon afterwards he was hired by William Lutley Sclater , then director of the South African Museum , as an animal collector in Pondoland and in the Colesberg district . On his return to England Shortridge made the acquaintance of Oldfield Thomas , who sent him from 1904 to 1906 on a collective expedition to southwestern Australia. During this expedition he visited the Albany District , Bunbury , Busselton and the cave region on the Margaret River , Bernier Island , the Gascoyne River District , the region north of Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie north of Laverton, among others . Some taxa, including Malurus bernieri , Sericornis balstoni , Climateris wellsi , Zosterops shortridgei and Zosterops balstoni , which Shortridge brought from Australia, are now considered either synonyms or subspecies of other species. Expeditions to Malaysia, Siam, the United States, Mexico, Honduras, Ceylon, Borneo, Bali, Celebes, the Moluccas and Java followed, where he collected over 1,500 mammal samples. In 1908 he went to Guatemala on behalf of the Zoological Society of London , from where he brought live animals. In the same year he was a member of the 50th anniversary expedition of the British Ornithologists' Union to Dutch New Guinea . In 1911 he was hired by the Bombay Natural History Society for a large mammal collection expedition. He then continued his work in Burma, where so far only a few collective expeditons had taken place and Shortridge thus pioneered the systematic research of the mammal fauna of this country. During the First World War Shortridge fought in France, Palestine and Iraq. He served as an observer in the Royal Flying Corps (later the Royal Air Force). After the war in November 1918, he was named No. 3 African Survey Party of the Royal Air Force in Pretoria , South Africa, where he was deputy commanding officer. He also collected mammals for the British Museum of Natural History in northern Rhodesia. In 1920 he became curator of mammals at the Kaffrarian Museum in King William's Town, South Africa. After Frank Pym's death in May 1920, he was appointed director of the museum in 1921. A year later he led several expeditions in the South African Union , including one to the Orange River between 1922 and 1923 , where he collected 376 samples, and a winter expedition in 1923 to South West Africa , from where he brought back 700 mammal samples. This expedition was funded in part by the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund and its results were described in 1925 by Oldfield Thomas and Martin Alister Campbell Hinton . Between 1930 and 1933 Shortridge published his work The Mammals of South-west Africa .

During his 28-year service at the Kaffrarian Museum, Shortridge undertook fourteen expeditions, from which he amassed a collection of over 25,000 mammal specimens.

literature

  • Anonymous: Obituary Capt. GC Shortridge In: Nature. No. 4145. April 9, 1949, pp. 556-557
  • Hubert M. Whittell (HMW): Obituary GC Shortridge In: Emu. Vol. 49, October 1949, pp. 148-150

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ O. Thomas & MAC Hinton: On Mammals collected in 1923 by Captain. GC Shortridge during the Percy Sladen and Kaffrarian Museum Expedition to South-West Africa. In: Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. Volume 95, No. 1, April 1925, pp. 221-246
personal data
SURNAME Shortridge, Guy Chester
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shortridge, GC
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British zoologist and museum director
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Honiton , Devon
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1949
Place of death King William's Town , South Africa