Leslie Desmond Edward Foster Vesey-Fitzgerald

Leslie Desmond Edward Foster Vesey-Fitzgerald MBE (born June 7, 1910 in Dunleer , Ireland , † May 3, 1974 in Nairobi , Kenya ) was an Irish entomologist , ornithologist , conservationist and plant collector .

Live and act

In 1930 Vesey-Fitzgerald graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London's Wye Agricultural College in Kent . In 1932 he carried out studies on biological pest control at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad . A year later he became a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London. From 1933 to 1936 he led research projects on the biological control of insect pests on sugar cane in Brazil , British Guiana and the British West Indies . He then carried out studies on the biological control of insect pests on coconut palms in the Seychelles , Madagascar and the East African coastal regions until 1939 . In 1938 he married Rosalinda Octavia Hindson. From 1939 to 1941 he was an entomologist at the Rubber Research Institute in Malaya .

After serving in the Federated Malay Volunteer Army for a year in 1941 , he worked as an entomologist in the Locust Control Unit of the Middle East in Sudan , Saudi Arabia and Oman until 1947 . Between 1947 and 1949 he was senior ranger assistant in Kenya . From 1949 to 1964 he worked as a senior research officer at the International Red Locust Control Service in Abercorn , Northern Rhodesia .

In 1964 he became an ecologist and conservationist in the national parks of Tanzania , where he experimented with an electric fence in the Arusha National Park, among other places .

Vesey-Fitzgerald took part in numerous ornithological, entomological and botanical expeditions to Kuwait , Oman , Saudi Arabia , Tanzania , Zambia , South Africa , the Mascarene Islands, the Seychelles and Trinidad and Tobago . His plant collections are now in the Natural History Museum , the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , in the Botanical State Collection Munich , in the NU Herbarium of the University of KwaZulu-Natal , in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and in the National Herbarium and Botanic Garden in Avondale, Harare , Zimbabwe .

Dedication names

In 1933 Hampton Wildman Parker named the frog species Flectonotus fitzgeraldi from Trinidad and Tobago and in 1947 the skinkart Janetaescincus veseyfitzgeraldi from the Seychelles in honor of Leslie Desmond Edward Foster Vesey-Fitzgerald. Further homages are Neodythemis fitzgeraldi ( Pinhey , 1961) and Apterostigma fitzgeraldi ( Weber , 1936).

Works (selection)

• 1940: On the Vegetation of Seychelles
• 1955: The Vegetation of the Outbreak Areas of the Red Locust ( Nomadacris septemfasciata Serv.) In Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia
• 1955: Vegetation of the Red Sea coast south of Jedda, Saudi Arabia . Journal of Ecology No. 43: pp. 477-489
• 1957: The Vegetation of the Red Sea coast north of Jedda. Saudi Arabia . Journal of Ecology No. 45: pp. 547-562.
• 1957: The vegetation of Central and Eastern Arabia . Journal of Ecology 45: pp. 779-798
• 1958: The Snakes of Northern Rhodesia and the Tanganyika Borderlands Brown Knight & Truscott London
• 1963: Annotated List of Grasses Collected in the Congo Drainage Basin of Northern Rhodesia and Tanganyika
• 1963: Central African Grasslands
• 1973: East African Grasslands East African Pub. House

literature

• Ray Desmond, Christine Ellwood: Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists: Including Plant Collectors, Flower Painters, and Garden Designers. CRC Press, 1994, ISBN 0-85066-843-3

Web links

• Brief information about Leslie Desmond Foster Vesey-Fitzgerald
• Entry for Leslie Desmond Foster Vesey-Fitzgerald on JSTOR
• Leslie Desmond Edward Foster-Vesey-Fitzgerald on thepeerage.com , accessed August 19, 2015.