Harry S. Swarth

Harry Schelwald Swarth (born January 26, 1878 in Chicago , Illinois , † October 22, 1935 in Berkeley , California ) was an American zoologist . His main research interests were ornithology and mammalogy .

Life

Swarth spent his early years in Chicago and Los Angeles. His interest in nature was aroused and promoted through close contacts with George Frean Morcom (1845–1932), an amateur ornithologist from Chicago. From 1904 to 1908 Swarth was an assistant in the Department of Zoology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. When the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology was founded in 1908 , Swarth received a post as assistant curator for birds. From 1910 to 1913 and from 1916 to 1927 he was a curator at the ornithological department. From 1913 to 1916 he was assistant director of the Museum of History, Science and Art in Los Angeles. In 1927 he became a curator at the Department of Mammalogy and Ornithology at the California Academy of Sciences . He held this post until his death in October 1935.

Swarth's zoological explorations spanned nearly 40 years and spanned several regions in western North America, including Arizona, southern California, southeast Alaska, and the coastline of British Columbia. He was considered one of the most active and distinguished researchers in vertebrate zoology on the west coast of the United States . In 1919 he was a founding member of the American Society of Mammalogists . In 1932 Swarth was a member of the Templeton-Crocker expedition to the Galapagos Islands , where he studied the avifauna and the rodent fauna.

Swarth described several avian and mammalian taxa , including subspecies passerella schistacea fulva and passerella schistacea canescens the slate Bunting subspecies Pipilo maculatus falcinellus , Pipilo maculatus umbraticola and Pipilo maculatus montanus the spot reason Ammer , the subspecies Geospiza pallida striatipecta the woodpecker Darwin Finch subspecies Melozone crissalis bullata and Melozone crissalis petulans of California basic Bunting , the subspecies baeolophus inornatus affabilis the oak Meise , the subspecies mime parvulus wenmani the Galapagos Mockingbird , the subspecies Dendragapus fuliginosus sitkensis the coastal mountain chicken , the subspecies Spizella breweri taverneri of Blass Bunting , the subspecies Strix occidentalis huachucae of the spotted owl , the subspecies Poecile gambeli atratus of the mountain titmouse , the subspecies Cistothorus palustris aestuarinus of the swamp wren , the subspecies Picoides villosus sitkensis of the hairpecker and the Vancouver marmot ( Marmota v ancouverensis ).

Dedication names

The Santiago Galapagos rat ( Nesoryzomys swarthi ), the subspecies Dipodomys heermanni swarthi of the Heermann kangaroo rat , the subspecies Passerella schistacea swarthi of the slate bunting and the subspecies Glaucidium californicum swarthi of the California dwarf owl are named after Swarth . In 1927 Loye Miller described the fossil falcon species Falco swarthi from the Young Pleistocene , which is now considered a subspecies of the recent gyrfalcon ( Falco rusticolus ).

Fonts (selection)

• Birds of the Huachuca Mountains Arizona, monograph in Pacific Coast Avifauna, 1904
• Study of a Collection of Geese of the Branta canadensis Group from the San Joaquin Valley California, 1913
• A Distributional List of the Birds of Arizona, monograph in Pacific Coast Avifauna, 1914
• Birds of the Papago Saguaro National Monument And The Neighboring Region, Arizona, 1920
• A Distributional List of the Birds of British Columbia, monograph in Pacific Coast Avifauna, 1925
• The Faunal Areas of Southern Arizona: A Study in Animal Distribution, 1929
• A Systematic Study of the Cooper Ornithological Club, 1929
• The Faunal Areas of Southern Arizona: A Study in Animal Distribution, article in the Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 1929
• The Avifauna of the Galapagos Islands, 1931, article in Occasional Papers of the California Academy of Sciences, 1931

literature

• ME Davidson: Harry Schelwaldt Swarth Science, New Series, Vol. 82, No. 2137 (Dec. 13, 1935), American Association for the Advancement of Science, pp. 562-563
• Jean M. Linsdale: Obituary Notices: Harry Schelwald Swarth In: Journal of Mammalogy, Volume 17, Issue 1, 14 February 1936, p. 85 doi : 10.2307 / 1374560
• Jean M. Linsdale: Harry Schelwald Swarth. Condor, Vol. 38, July 1936, pp. 155-168
• GMM: Obituary , Ibis, Vol. 78 (2), 1936, p. 386.
• Joseph Mailliard: In Memoriam: Harry Schelwald Swarth 1878-1935 , The Auk, Vol 54 (2), April 1937, pp. 127-134
• Bo Beolens, Michael Grayson, Michael Watkins: The Eponym Dictionary of Birds. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.
• Hany Abdoun: Biographical Sketch: Harry Schelwald Swarth (1878-1935). California Academy of Sciences