Lee H. Herman

Leander "Lee" Hazen Herman (born October 6, 1939 ) is an American coleopterologist . His main research interests are the short-winged species (Staphylinidae). He is a curator emeritus in the Invertebrate Zoology Department of the American Museum of Natural History and a professor emeritus at the Richard Glider Graduate School.

Life

Herman's work with ruff began after graduating from graduate school . At the suggestion of the cicada expert David Allan Young , he devoted himself to the ecologist, behavior, genetics, morphology and finally the systematics of the raven. He spent a year in Iran , where he Beetle and ectoparasites of mammals collected. In 1961 he received a Bachelor of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University . After studying at North Carolina State University in Raleigh from 1961 to 1962 and at Purdue University in Lafayette , Indiana from 1966 to 1967, he received his Ph.D. in October 1967. from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC . His doctoral thesis was entitled A generic revision of the Oxytelinae of the world (Coleoptera Staphylinida) .

Herman's first project was a revision of the Paederinae subfamily . It comprises 220 genera and 6000 species of predatory beetles. Their range extends over most of the earth and most species live in humus and in soil litter. Herman then devoted himself to the revision of the subfamily Oxytelinae , where he was particularly interested in the genus Bledius , for which he first used the scanning electron microscope in the early 1970s to reveal structural details of the mouthparts that were useful in classifying the genus. The beetles of the genus Bledius are distributed globally. They burrow in the damp sand and feed on diatoms . Herman also published studies on the subfamily Pseudopsinae . He did field work in North America , South America , Nicaragua , Iran and Vietnam . Together with other members of the Entomological Society of America , he founded the Coleopterists Society in Dallas in 1968 , which publishes The Coleopterists Bulletin .

Herman described over 271 species and 11 genera.

Awards and dedication names

In 2014, Lee H. Herman received the JO Westwood Medal from the Royal Entomological Society . In 2011 the short-winged species Neolindus hermani was named after Herman, who revised the genus Neolindus in 1991 .

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. 77-78

Web links

• Employee profile at the American Museum of Natural History