Jörg Wunderlich (arachnologist)

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Jörg Wunderlich (born December 19, 1939 in Berlin ) is a German arachnologist .

Life

Jörg Wunderlich first grew up in east Berlin and moved with his family to the western part of the city in 1951. The limited opportunities for school education in the post-war period and the change to a school system with widely differing curricula meant that Wunderlich did not take the Abitur examination until he was 20 years old. He took up a teaching degree in mathematics, but soon switched to biology , geography, political science and philosophy. He completed his basic studies with a thesis on the spider fauna of Berlin's Peacock Island . In 1969, Wunderlich moved to Baden-Württemberg, completed his teaching degree and became a teacher at the Neuenbürg grammar school . He held this position for 25 years, part-time over the last ten years. At his new home in Straubenhardt , Wunderlich was a member of the local council for Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen for ten years .

Arachnology

Wunderlich developed his arachnology knowledge mainly autodidactically . At the beginning of his scientific work he had to experience that his work was unsuccessful in front of the editors and reviewers of arachnological publications because they lacked background knowledge on paleontology and paleoarachnology. That is why Wunderlich mainly self-published . While his first work was faunistic and ecological studies of the German spider fauna, he soon turned to taxonomy . In addition, he wrote more than 100 publications, including revisions of the genera Micaria and Walckenaeria and numerous initial descriptions of European spiders .

One of Wunderlich's key activities is the taxonomy and biogeography faunistics spider Macaronesia . To this end, he has published two extensive monographs that contain numerous initial descriptions. Wunderlich has been dealing with inclusions in amber since the 1980s , and in this area, too, he has described numerous taxa not only of the spiders but also of related orders . In terms of the number of species described, Wunderlich is one of the ten most productive arachnologists in history with more than 1,200 species (without synonyms, including fossil taxa). In contrast to Eugène Simon (almost 3,800 species), he is not favored by complete economic independence and, like Norman I. Platnick (more than 1,800 species) , could not fall back on the infrastructure of a large natural history museum and a staff of employees. For faunistics, behavior, parasitism, mimicry and the ecology of fossil arachnids, Wunderlich is one of only a few arachnologists in the world who deals with these topics.

Wunderlich occasionally appeared outside of his field of expertise, for example as a co-author in the first description of the fossil soot-dew- like Metacapnodium succinum . His author's abbreviation is "J.Wund."

Dedication names (selection)

Initial descriptions (selection)

Wunderlich has described almost 1,300 recent and fossil spider species in 76 families . Of particular importance are his work on the taxonomy of fossil arachnids , with more than 20 families described, and with more than half of all species of fossil spiders described so far.

Publications (selection)

  • Spider fauna yesterday and today . Erich Bauer at Quelle & Meyer, Wiesbaden 1986, ISBN 3-88988-104-1 .
  • The fossil spiders in Dominican amber . Self-published, Straubenhardt 1988.
  • The spider fauna of the Macaronesian Islands. Taxonomy, Ecology, Biogeography and Evolution . Self-published, Straubenhardt 1991.
  • Fossil spiders in amber and copal. Conclusions, revisions, new taxa and family diagnoses of fossil and extant taxa . 2 volumes. Self-published, Hirschberg 2004, ISBN 3-931473-10-4 .
  • Fossil and extant spiders (Araneae). Phylogeny, diversifications, extinctions, biogeography, ecology and ethology . Self-published, Hirschberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-931473-11-2 .
  • The spider families of Europe. Keys, diagnoses and diversity . Self-published, Hirschberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-931473-14-2 .
  • Mesozoic spiders. Spiders of the Mesozoic . Self-published, Hirschberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-931473-15-0 .
  • Ten papers on fossil and extant spiders (Araneae) . Self-published, Hirschberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-931473-16-7 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Juri M. Marusik: Jörg Wunderlich is 75 years old , p. Iii.
  2. ↑ a b Juri M. Marusik: Jörg Wunderlich is 75 years old. P. Iv.
  3. ↑ Juri M. Marusik: Jörg Wunderlich is 75 years old. P. Vi.
  4. ↑ Juri M. Marusik: Jörg Wunderlich is 75 years old. S. v.
  5. ↑ Juri M. Marusik: Jörg Wunderlich is 75 years old. P. Vii.
personal data
SURNAME Wunderlich, Jörg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German arachnologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin