Martin Eisentraut

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Martin Eisentraut with helpers on a research trip to Central Cameroon near Nyasoso , Kupe . Behind him with hat taxidermist Heiner Mittendorf (December 1966)

Martin Bruno Eisentraut (born October 21, 1902 in Großtöpfer , Geismar , Thuringia ; † July 5, 1994 in Bonn ) was a German zoologist. His main research interests were mammalogy and herpetology .

Life

Learned Eisentraut fascinated since childhood by nature at school the craft of taxidermist . In 1921 he began studying zoology in Halle (Saale) , which he completed in 1925 as Dr. phil. completed. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the genetic makeup of locusts (Orthoptera). After graduating, he became an assistant in the Museum of Natural History at the Humboldt University in Berlin . First he worked in the herpetological department and then also in the mammalogical department. When the Second World War broke out, he joined the army, where he carried out controls against malaria and typhus in the areas occupied by German troops. After the war he returned to Berlin, where he worked from 1947 to 1950 as curator of the herpetological department at the Museum für Naturkunde. Together with Kurt Deckert and Heinz Wermuth (1918–2002) Eisentraut was responsible for moving the herpetological collections from the war stores in the museum cellars back to the exhibition halls. The basements were damp and many of the jar labels, which in most cases were the only easy way to identify its contents, had fallen off. Eisentraut and his colleagues then had to redefine the specimens with the help of descriptions in the literature. This was a critical process because it was a collection of great historical importance and included many type specimens. Eisentraut was predominantly mammalogue, but his student student Heinz Wermuth started a career as a herpetologist.

In 1950 Eisentraut accepted a curatorial position in the mammalogical department of the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart. In 1957 he became director of the Zoological Research Institute and Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn. Apart from the period between 1969 and 1971, Eisentraut held the post of director until his retirement in 1977.

Eisentraut had a wide range of interests. He dealt with questions of evolution, physiological ecology, faunistics and zoogeography . He regularly carried out his research work in the field. From 1928 to 1930 he visited the Balearic Islands (including Ibiza and Formentera ) and the Islas Columbretes . From 1930 to 1931 he took part in the German expedition to the Gran Chaco in Bolivia . From 1938 to 1973 he undertook many expeditions to West Africa, Cameroon and the island of Fernando Póo (today's Bioko ). In 1979 he made another excursion to Bolivia, about which he wrote the book In the Land of the Chaco Indians in 1983 : Encounters with animals and people in southeastern Bolivia .

Eisentraut wrote 240 scientific articles, of which 43 were on bats and 16 on amphibians and reptiles. He described several bat and rodent species, including Hartwig's soft-haired mouse ( Praomys hartwigi ), Basilio's striped mouse ( Hybomys basilii ), the Guinea horseshoe bat ( Rhinolophus guineensis ) and the Cameroon round-leaf nose ( Hipposideros camerunensis ). In 1949, in his identification guide, The Lizards of the Spanish Mediterranean Islands, he identified the various breeds of the Balearic Lizard and the Pityusen Lizard , many of which, however, are now invalid.

Eisentraut was also interested in the evolution and melanism of island lizards. In 1930 he carried out experiments in which he released pigmented and unpigmented lizards on islands and islets that were previously free of lizards. He wrote his last scientific paper on the subject in 1981 together with Wolfgang Böhme .

In 1932 and 1933 Eisentraut published works on the spawning behavior of the frog genus Leptodactylus in Bolivia and on melanism in the lizard genus Cnemidophorus on an island off the coast of Venezuela. In 1964 he investigated the breeding behavior of sea turtles on Fernando Póo. Eisentraut carried out extensive studies on the distribution of fauna on the Cameroon Mountain and on Fernando Póo, which he summarized in 1963 and 1973 in the two books The Vertebrates of the Kamerungebirge and The Vertebrate Fauna by Fernando Poo and West Cameroon: with special consideration of the importance of the Pleistocene climatic fluctuations for today's fauna distribution .

Award

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 43, March 9, 1973.
personal data
SURNAME Eisentraut, Martin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eisentraut, Martin Bruno (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mammalogist and herpetologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Großtöpfer , Geismar , Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1994
Place of death Bonn