Louis Amédée Lantz

Louis Amédée Lantz (born March 20, 1886 in Mulhouse , Alsace ; † February 3, 1953 in Basel , Switzerland ), sometimes also written in the order Amédée Louis Lantz , was a French herpetologist and chemist. His main research interests were the salamanders and lizards of the Palearctic .

Life

From 1903 to 1904 Lantz studied at the University of Montpellier . In 1907 he obtained his diploma as chemical engineer at the Chemical Institute in Mulhouse. In 1908 he accepted a position as a research chemist in Moscow . This gave him the opportunity to do field work while on vacation. He kept salamanders as pets and was particularly skilled at breeding and hybridizing them. During the October Revolution of 1917 he was forced to leave Russia. He moved to Manchester, where in 1918 he became head of the research laboratory of the Calico Printers' Association textile company. He retired in 1950 and originally intended to continue his research at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. However, he died in Basel in February 1953 after a brief illness.

Between 1909 and 1950 Lantz published around 35 herpetological works. One of his earliest articles appeared in the magazine Blätter für Aquarien- und Terrariumkunde , which was edited by Willy Wolterstorff . Lantz got in touch with Wolterstorff, who became his mentor and a collegial connection was established, where the Swedish amateur herpetologist Otto Cyrén was also involved, with whom Lantz worked long-term in fieldwork or publications. Between 1913 and 1920 Lantz and Cyrén described the lizard species Darevskia parvula , Darevskia pontica and Lacerta media . In his early scientific work, Lantz dealt with the salamanders and lizards of the Caucasus and the Trans-Caspian region. In 1922 he published an appraisal of the collection that Ivan Ivanovich Lepjochin had compiled in various Russian provinces from 1768 to 1769.

Lantz's main work, which deals with the genus Eremias in the Middle East , was published in Tbilisi , Georgia in 1928 under the title Les Eremias de l'Asie Occidentale , initially in two parts, and was published in 1929 in the form of a book. After moving to Manchester, Lantz relocated his field work to the Mediterranean coast and the Pyrenees , which was also reflected in the subject matter of his publications. In 1930 he wrote two articles about the marbled salamander ( Ambystoma opacum ) and 1931 he described the Japanese Winkelzahnmolchart Hynobius hirosei .

Lantz's most surprising discovery was that the forest lizards found in the Pyrenees exhibit ovoviviparous behavior. His studies on the rearing of newts in human care, published in 1947, allowed him to investigate sterility barriers between species and natural hybrid populations. This enabled him to complete some of the earlier works by Wolterstorff, who died in 1943. Lantz continued his research on the genus Triturus and other newt species, and in his final years he became convinced of the importance of genetic studies. His last articles were published in the Journal Journal of Genetics and dealt with background adaptations and the phenotypes and spermatogenesis of interspecific hybrids of the genus Triturus .

Dedication names

In 1914, Willy Wolterstorff named the Caucasian pond newt ( Lissotriton vulgaris lantzi ) after Lantz. The Russian malacologist Wilhelm Adolf Lindholm honored Lantz in 1927 in the type epithet of the shrub snail species Fruticicola lantzi . In 2009 Oscar J. Arribas described the subspecies Zootoca vivipara louislantzi of the forest lizard from the Pyrenees.

literature

• Hampton Wildman Parker : Louis A. Lantz In: Copeia, Vol. 1 (February 19, 1954), p. 79
• Kraig Adler: Contributions to the History of Herpetology. Volume 2. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 2007, ISBN 978-0-91698-471-7 , p. 139.
• Ivan Ineich , Igor Doronin, Jean Lescure: Vie et oeuvre de l'Alsacien Louis Amédée Lantz (1886–1953), pionnier de l'herpétologie européenne. Bulletin de la Société Herpétologique de France, 162, 2017, pp. 55–106. (French, biography and bibliography)