José Álvarez del Villar

José Álvarez del Villar (born May 30, 1908 in Zamora , Michoacán , † 1989 ) was a Mexican ichthyologist .

Life

Álvarez del Villar was the son of José Álvarez y Álvarez de Cadena and Guadalupe del Villar. His academic training began at the University of California , where he received his bachelor's degree in agricultural science . He then returned to Mexico City to study chemistry , parasitology and, from 1938, biology at the Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biológicas of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN). His main interests were the study of fish diversity and commercial fish farming. He went back to the United States , where he specialized in fish farming at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute and graduated from the University of Michigan with a Masters of Science degree in 1945 . He received his doctorate in 1948 at the IPN.

His research focused mainly on studying the composition and distribution of fish in various Mexican inland waters. He also studied fossil fish. In 1948 his first book, Catálogo de los Peces de las Aguas continentales mexicanas , was published, based on his dissertation. He wrote about eighty scientific papers in national and foreign journals as well as the textbooks Anatomía comparada básica (1979) and Los cordados (1967, with new editions in 1973 and 1976). One of his closest collaborators was Salvador Contreras-Balderas , an expert on ichthyofauna in northern Mexico.

In 1951, José Álvarez del Villar was one of the founding members of the Sociedad Mexicana de Hidrobiología . He has also held a number of administrative positions including advisor to the Ministry of the Navy, advisor to the Museo de Historia Natural de la Ciudad de México and head of the Commission for the Promotion of Rural Fish Farming.

Álvarez del Villar first described around 35 new taxa, including the panther fish ( Chapalichthys pardalis ), Algansea barbara , Chapalichthys peraticus , Chirostoma melanoccus , Chirostoma reseratum , Allotoca regalis . Hyporhamphus mexicanus , Poecilia sulphuraria , Priapella compressa , Priapella intermedia , Cyprinodon Beltrani , Poblana letholepis , Poblana squamata , Gambusia echeagarayi , Meeks Hochlandkärpfling ( Allotoca meeki ) Atherinella schultzi , Cynodonichthys hendrichsi , Tampichthys ipni and Xiphophorus clemenciae .

In addition to ichthyology, Álvarez del Villar dealt with the charrería (the Mexican rodeo). To this end, he published the books Historia de la charrería (1941), Hombres y caballos de México: historia y práctica de la "charrería" (1947), Origenes del charro mexicano (1950), Raíces de la tauromaquia charra (1973) and La charrería mexicana: su historia y práctica (1987).

His son Ticul Álvarez Solorzano (1935-2001) was a well-known mammaloge .

Dedication names

Carl Leavitt Hubbs and Victor G. Springer described the Alvarezkärpfling ( Gambusia alvarezi ) in 1957 . In 1960 Donn E. Rosen described the subspecies Xiphophorus helleri alvarezi of the swordtail . In 1976, Robert Rush Miller named the El Potosi desert pup ( Cyprinodon alvarezi ) after Álvarez del Villar. Salvador Contreras-Balderas and María de Lourdes Lozano Vilano named the carp species Cyprinella alvarezdelvillari in honor of José Álvarez del Villar in 1994 .

literature

• Allen G. Debus: World Who's who in Science: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Scientists from Antiquity to the Present , 1968, p. 40
• Maria Teresa Cortés: José Álvarez del Villar. In: Anales de la Escuela nacional de ciencias biológicas, Volume 30, Numbers 1-4, June 1986, pp. 11-18 (Spanish)

Web links

• Brief portrait (Spanish)
• Literature by and about José Álvarez del Villar in the bibliographic database WorldCat