Reeve M. Bailey

Reeve Maclaren Bailey (born May 2, 1911 in Fairmont , West Virginia , † July 2, 2011 in Ann Arbor , Michigan ) was an American ichthyologist and university professor.

Life

Bailey was the first son of Joseph Randle Bailey and Elizabeth Weston Maclaren Bailey. His father was the owner and operator of a coal mine. His younger brother Joseph Randle (1913-1998) later became a well-known herpetologist . When Bailey was four years old, his father was killed in an accident at a freight yard . His mother then brought her two sons to Perrysburg , Ohio , near Toledo . The Bailey brothers attended Perrysburg Elementary School before moving to Toledo and graduating from high school. They developed their interest in nature in scout camps . An elderly cousin helped the brothers financially with their college education at the University of Michigan .

During the summer of 1928 and 1929, Bailey was assistant naturalist in Toledo Boy Scout camp where Leonard R. Wilson senior naturalist was. Wilson served as a geologist and paleobotanist on the faculty of Coe College and later taught at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Oklahoma . In 1930, Bailey met the young naturalist Roger Tory Peterson at YMCA Camp Storer in Jackson County , Michigan , long before he was known as a successful bird watcher .

Because of their interest in herpetology, both Bailey and his brother became friends with Roger Conant , who became curator of herpetology at the Toledo Zoo in the spring of 1929 . In 1929 and 1930 the Bailey brothers accompanied Conant on a collective expedition to Ohio, where he carried out intensive studies on reptiles, which were published in 1938 under the title The Reptiles of Ohio . In 1930 Bailey took part with Conant on a three-week expedition to Florida from the Toledo Zoo, after which he worked again at Camp Storer. Conant, who was only two years older than Bailey, was a huge influence on the Bailey brothers. In 1936, Bailey wrote his first scientific treatise on New Jersey's herpetofauna in collaboration with Conant . In 1933, Bailey received his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan . During his studies he was in close contact with Frank N. Blanchard , Helen Beulah Thompson Gaige , Norman Edouard Hartweg and Alexander Grant Ruthven , the then President of the University of Michigan.

During the Great Depression , Bailey worked as a dishwasher, waiter, and laboratory assistant at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. In the latter position he was in charge of the mouse collection of the ecologist Lee Raymond Dice , whom he assisted in measuring thousands of mouse skulls. For the summers of 1932 through 1934, Bailey worked as a naturalist at a Boy Scout camp in New Jersey and earned enough to pay part of the tuition fees. After a year at graduate school, Bailey's main interest shifted to ichthyology. This was due, on the one hand, to the fact that the career prospects in the herpetologist were essentially poor during the Depression and, on the other hand, to the suggestions he received during an ichthyology course with John R. Greeley , the then assistant curator at the fish department at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology , received. Greeley left Michigan to become an ichthyologist in the New York State Conservation Department. His successor at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology was Milton Trautman . With Greeley's assistance, Bailey joined the New York State Biological Survey team during the summers of 1935–37. The studies, carried out between 1927 and 1940 under the direction of Emmaline Moore , culminated in a monumental series of reports on the New York State Conservation Department's watershed. During his work on the survey, Bailey identified between half a million and three quarters of a million fish. Companions, many of whom became active with the American Society of Herpetologists and Ichthyologists (ASIH), included Greeley, Perry Gilbert , Karl Lagler, and Ed Raney .

Bailey's dissertation A Systematic Revision of the Centrachid Fishes, with a Discussion of Their Distribution, Variations, and Probable Interrelationships , with which he received his doctorate in 1938 under the direction of Carl Leavitt Hubbs , was a systematic revision of the sunfish (Centrarchidae). Parts of the work were published by Bailey alone or in collaboration with Hubbs and the systematic changes were largely incorporated into the taxonomy. From 1938 to 1944, Bailey was a lecturer at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University ), where he taught up to 23 hours per semester. In 1944, Hubbs left the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology and Bailey was appointed assistant curator of the fish department. In 1948 he was appointed curator. From 1944 to 1950 he was an assistant professor, from 1950 to 1959 he was an adjunct professor and from 1959 until his retirement in 1981 he was a professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Michigan. Bailey played an important role in the training of ichthyologists. His doctoral students include Sidney Shapiro, W. Robert Martin, Paul H. Eschmeyer , William Ralph Taylor , Carroll R. Norden , Clarence Lavett Smith , Carter R. Gilbert , Frederick Paul Cichocki , Suebsin Sontirat , Walter John Rainboth , John G. Lundberg and Stuart G. Poss .

Donn E. Rosen , who had worked with Myron Gordon , came to Michigan from the American Museum of Natural History to do viviparous toothcar research, as the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology housed the largest collection in that family. Rosen won Bailey to co-author his monograph The poeciliid fishes (Cyprinodontiformes), their structure, zoogeography and systematics , published in 1963. Soon afterwards, Rosen, whose father was seriously ill, asked Bailey to represent him on an expedition of the American Museum of Natural History to the Río Iténez (= Rio Guaporé ) in the Amazon basin on the Bolivian-Brazilian border. The trip was funded by grants from the National Geographic Society and the United States Army in 1964 and faced serious logistical problems. In the dry season, the expedition boat stopped on a shallow part of the river. There was guerrilla action beforehand, so the expedition was confined to a 15 to 20 mile stretch of the river for 10 weeks. Still, Bailey amassed a remarkable collection of fish that was split between the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. Subsequently, Rosen and Bailey took part in five expeditions to Guatemala between 1966 and 1974, during which freshwater fish were collected across the country. Again, the large collections were split between the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. Often the emphasis was placed on relatively isolated karst areas with underground drainage. Access was by helicopter. The fish fauna was impoverished but contained endemic species. Some of the newly discovered taxa have been described by Rosen, Bailey, or others. Rosen developed his views on the role of vicariance in geographical distribution during this period. Rosen's untimely death in 1986 interrupted the planned general fauna report on Guatemala's freshwater fish .

Bailey conducted field studies of fish in several parts of the United States, and his work formed the basis of much of the knowledge about the classification and distribution of major fish groups in the drainage areas of the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes . About his studies in Iowa and South Dakota, he published the works A check-list of the fishes of Iowa, with keys for identification (1951), A revised list of the fishes of Iowa with keys for identification (1956) and Fishes of South Dakota . Bailey undertook further expeditions to Paraguay and Lake Tanganyika .

Bailey has published numerous publications on the systematics, hybridization, and zoogeography of North American freshwater fish. He was also an authority on fish nomenclature and was a member of the American Fisheries Society's Committee on Fish Names. From 1951 to 1971 he was chairman and from 1974 to 1975 he was president and chairman of the executive committee of that society. In 1980 he received the American Fisheries Society Award of Excellence. He was also a member of the editorial committee and in 1959 President of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. From 1968 to 1972 he was a member of the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , of which he had been a fellow since 1963. Bailey was also active in several other professional societies.

Bailey is one of the Erstbeschreibern of species Percina palamaris , Micropterus coosae , Percina nasuta , Etheostoma acuticeps , carlhubbsia Stuarti , Phallichthys fairweatheri , Thoburnia atripinnis , Synodontis rufigiensis , Barbus atkinsoni , Barbus venustus , Scoloplax Dicra , Cottus confusus , Cottus echinatus , Cottus extensus , Cottus pitensis , Cottus hubbsi , Etheostoma zonistium , Etheostoma pyrrhogaster , Monopterus desilvai , Monopterus Roseni , Cyprinella callitaenia , Micropterus notius , Mesobola spinifer , trisella Etheostoma , Pteronotropis hubbsi , baileychromis centropomoides , Neolamprologus prochilus , Bathybagrus Tetranema , Lophiobagrus aquilus , Lophiobagrus asperispinis , Lophiobagrus brevispinis , Pteronotropis signipinnis , Noturus hildebrandi , Barbus gestetneri , Barbus papilio , Ctenopoma ashbysmithi , Varicorhinus lufupensis , Varicorhinus upembensis , Etheostoma flavum , Satan Eurystomus , brachyrhaphis hartwegi , Gambusia atrora , Gambusia luma , Hetera ndria anetoi , Heterandria attenuata , Heterandria litoperas , Etheostoma bellator , Etheostoma colorosum , Etheostoma lachneri , Etheostoma ramseyi , Etheostoma raneyi and the genus of the prickly dwarf catfish ( Scolopax ).

Dedication names

C. Richard Robins named the bullhead species Cottus baileyi in 1961 in honor of Reeve M. Bailey. In 1971 Donn Rosen named the tetra species Astyanax baileyi after Bailey. Lawrence M. Page and Brooks M. Burr described the jumping bass species Etheostoma baileyi in 1982 . Walter John Rainboth described the Kärpflingsart Chagunius baileyi in 1986 . In 1986 Max Poll established the genus Baileychromis for the cichlid species Leptochromis centropomoides , which was described in 1977 by Bailey and Donald J. Stewart .

literature

• Margaret M. Stewart, Gerald R. Smith: Historical Perspective: Reeve Maclaren Bailey, Copeia 2000 (4), 2000, pp. 1118-1124

Web links

• Portrait at the University of Michigan
• Short biography at Prabook
• Portrait at Find a Grave