Philip Ashmole

Nelson Philip Ashmole (born January 11, 1934 in Amersham , Buckinghamshire , England), commonly known as Philip Ashmole , is a British zoologist and conservationist. His research focus is the avifauna of islands including St. Helena , the Azores , Tenerife , Ascension and Kiritimati . Other interests are insects and spiders, from which Ashmole discovered some new taxa.

Life

In 1957 Ashmole graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Zoology from Brasenose College , Oxford . In the same year he became a research student at the Edward Gray Institute of Field Ornithology (EGI) and accompanied the couple Bernard and Sally Stonehouse and the ornithologist Doug Dorward on a two-year expedition of the British Ornithologists' Union to the South Atlantic island of Ascension . Here Ashmole studied the annual moult of the terns. In 1959 he wrote his doctoral thesis on this in Oxford, entitled The Biology of Certain Terns: With Special Reference to Black Noddy Anous tenuirostris and the Wideawake Sterna fuscata on Ascension Island . In 1960 Ashmole married Myrtle Jane Goodacre, whom he met in 1957 at a student conference. Myrtle Goodacre worked as an assistant librarian with the EGI and later joined Ashmole during his expeditions. The couple have a son and two daughters.

After completing his doctorate, Ashmole worked as a demonstrator at the University of Oxford from 1960 . He also worked as a research officer at the EGI until 1963. Through the mediation of David Lack , who with George Evelyn Hutchinson worked at EGI, Ashmole received a summer research fellowship of Yale University , with whom he for a year as an employee of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Hawaii the effects of nuclear testing on terns and other birds studied on Kiritimati . He then got a job as an assistant professor at Yale University, where he did research until 1972. From 1972 to 1992 he held the post of Assistant Professor at the University of Edinburgh .

Ashmole collected, among other things, subfossil material from extinct bird species, including the St. Helena hoopoe , the Ascension night heron and the Ascension rail . During a month-long research stay on fossil bird species on St. Helena in 1962, together with his colleague Doug Dorward, he found the pincers of a giant St. Helena earwig , which was rediscovered at short notice in 1965.

In recent years, Philip and Myrtle Ashmole have dedicated themselves to conservation work, including the renewal of the Carrifran Wildwood in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. In 1996, the Ashmoles founded The Borders Forest Trust conservation association. Philip Ashmole was the first director of this organization until 2007.

In 2015 Philip and Myrtle Ashmole received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the RSPB Nature of Scotland Awards.

Fonts (selection)

• P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: Comparative Feeding Ecology of Sea Birds of a Tropical Oceanic Island . Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 1967
• P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: Natural history excursions in Tenerife: A guide to the countryside, plants and animals . Kidston Mill Press, 1989. ISBN 0-9514544-0-4
• P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: St. Helena and Ascension Island: a natural history . Anthony Nelson, Oswestry, 2000. ISBN 0-904614-61-1
• P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: The Carrifran Wildwood Story: Ecological Restoration from the Grass Roots , Borders Forest Trust, 2009. ISBN 0-9534346-4-8
• P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: Natural History of Tenerife , Whittles Publishing, Dunbeath, 2016. ISBN 978-1-84995-225-5

literature

• Men of Achievement , p. 33, 15th Edition 93-94, Taylor & Francis, 1993. ISBN 0-948875-75-5
• Ted Anderson: The Life of David Lack: Father of Evolutionary Ecology , p. 167, Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-19-992264-2

Web links

• Philip and Myrtle Ashmole's website