René Léon Bourret

René Léon Bourret (born January 28, 1884 in Nérac , Lot-et-Garonne department , † July 28, 1957 in Toulouse ) was a French herpetologist and geologist . His research focus was the herpetofauna of Indochina .

Life

Bourret arrived in Tonkin in 1900 for military reasons . In 1907 he became a land surveyor. He returned to France to study geology, where he became a student of Charles Jacob in 1912 and graduated from the University of Toulouse in 1913 . After the First World War he worked from 1919 to 1925 as a geological assistant in the mining and geographic exploration in northeast Tonkin, about which he published important articles on the geology of Tonkin and Laos . In 1922 he received his doctorate from the University of Paris . In 1925 Bourret became professor at the École supérieure des Sciences of the Université Indochinoise in Hanoi .

Bourret's first zoological publication was a general survey of the vertebrates of Indochina, published in 1927. In 1933 he began his scientific publications on herpetology , including an article on new species of snakes, which he published in collaboration with his colleague Fernand Angel . Between 1934 and 1944 he published 25 numbered specialist articles on reptiles and amphibians, in which he reported on new areas of distribution and numerous new species. He also published several identification manuals, including a major work on sea ​​snakes (1934), but also works on gibbons and other mammals and books on other vertebrates.

When the Japanese occupation of French Indochina began in the autumn of 1940 , Bourret stayed in Hanoi, where he published until 1944. Before nationalist troops controlled Hanoi in 1945, he moved to the south of the country and in May 1947 he returned to France, where he settled in Toulouse, but gave up his scientific work. Most of Bourret's specimens, including many type specimens , are kept in the natural history museums of Paris and Toulouse.

Bourret's reputation is largely based on three major monographs. These include the two-volume work Les serpents de l'Indochine (1936), Les tortues de l'Indochine (1941), the first extensive work on the turtles of Indochina and Les Batrachiens de L'Indochine (1942). A manuscript for Les lézards de l'Indochine , completed in 1943, was only published as a book in 2009.

To Bourrets described reptile species include Achalinus ater , Argyrophis giadinhensis , Cuora galbinifrons , Dendrelaphis ngansonensis , Diploderma chapaense , Emoia laobaoense , Enhydris longicauda , Enhydris subtaeniata , Eutropis chapaensis , Hebius annamensis , Hebius atemporal , Hebius chapaensis , poilani Leptoseps , Lycodon meridionalis , lacroixi Oligodon , Opisthotropis jacobi , Ovophis tonkinensis , Plestiodon tamdaoensis , Pseudocalotes poilani , Rhabdophis angeli , Rhabdophis callichroma , Scincella ochracea , Sphenomorphus tridigitus , Sphenomorphus tritaeniatus and Tropidophorus baviensis . In mammals he described the taxa Rhinolophus rex paradoxolophus , Cynopterus brachyotis hoffeti , Hipposideros armiger tranninhensis and Hipposideros turpis alongensis . The amphibian species he has described include Paramesotriton deloustali , Zhangixalus dorsoviridis , Theloderma bicolor , Philautus maosonensis , Kurixalus banaensis , Gracixalus gracilipes and Sylvirana maosonensis .

In total, Rene Bourret recorded 177 lizard taxa (i.e. species and subspecies), 245 snake taxa, 45 turtle taxa, and 171 amphibian taxa for the Indochinese region.

Dedication names

Fernand Angel named 1935 Skinkart Dibamus bourreti by Bourret. 1963 honored Konrad Klemmer Bourret in the epithet of the subspecies Protobothrops jerdonii bourreti , a toxic pit viper , which in Vietnam occurs. In 1983 Alain Dubois named the Vietnamese frog species Leptobrachella bourreti in honor of Bourret. In 1994 Fritz Jürgen Obst and Michael Reimann described the Bourret hinged tortoise ( Cuora bourreti ). In 2004 Frank Tillack , Thomas Ziegler and Le Khac Quyet named Bouret's cat snake ( Boiga bourreti ) after Bourret.

literature

• Kraig Adler: Contributions to the History of Herpetology, Society for the study of amphibians and reptiles . 1989. Volume 5. Ithaca, New York, ISBN 0-916984-19-2 , p. 107
• Michel Bilotte: 1912–1928: L'aventure pyrénéenne de Charles Jacob. Bulletin de la Société d'histoire naturelle de Toulouse, 146, 2010, pp. 63–70 (short biography of René Bourret on page 68)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Ziegler & Truong Quang Nguyen: New discoveries of amphibians and reptiles from Vietnam Bonn Zoological Bulletin 57 (2), November 2010, pp. 137–147