Henri Coiffait

Henri Coiffait (born June 28, 1907 in Moutiers-au-Perche , Orne department , † May 21, 1989 in Toulouse ) was a French coleopterologist .

Life

Coiffait was a passionate beetle collector even as a child. After graduating from L'Ecole normal d'instituteurs in Le Mans , he became a teacher in the Sarthe department . By 1939 he had amassed an important collection of beetles and described his first species of short-winged species.

During the Second World War he served as an air officer and in 1947 he was promoted to captain of the reserve.

From 1940 to 1945 Coiffait lived in Pau and Toulouse. From 1945 he studied natural sciences in Bordeaux, where he received his license in 1947 . During the war years, Coiffait developed an interest in caving, which later became an important part of his scientific career. In 57 of his 280 publications he dealt with cave-dwelling beetles.

After the Second World War he worked as a research assistant in the laboratory of the Center national de la recherche scientifique in Moulis in the Ariège department and in 1958 he became a member and finally research officer at the natural science faculty of the University of Toulouse .

After founding the magazine Annales de Spéléologie in 1959, he became editor-in-chief. In 1970 Coiffait founded the journal Nouvelle Revue d'Entomologie , of which the first issue appeared from 1971. In 1972 his most important work, Coléoptère's Staphylinidae de la région paléarctique occidentale , appeared, of which several supplementary volumes were published until 1984. Coiffait made an important contribution to the knowledge of the short-winged species (Staphylinidae). In 1899 he described species of beetles and 178 genera from the families Carabidae , Leiodidae and Staphylinidae, of which the latter accounts for the largest part of his work with 1775 species and 158 species. Coiffet's collection, housed in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, includes 799 holotypes, 5020 paratypes and 1907 species

Awards and dedication names

In 1959 Coiffait received the Prix Jean Dollfus of the Société entomologique de France . More than 100 beetle taxa from the families Neanuridae , Carabidae, Melyridae , Chrysomelidae and Staphylinidae are named after him.

literature

• Aleš Smetana , Lee H. Herman : Brief history of taxonomic studies of the Staphylinidae including biographical sketches of the investigators In: Catalog of the Staphylinidae (Insecta: Coleoptera). 1758 to the end of the second millennium. I. Introduction, history, biographical sketches, and omaliine group , pp. 55-56