Renzo Stefani

Renzo Stefani (born February 12, 1922 in Lussingrande , Lussino , Pola Province, Kingdom of Italy , † June 15, 2007 in Cagliari ) was an Italian zoologist and university lecturer . His main research interests were entomology and herpetology .

Life

Stefani was born in 1922 as the son of the primary school teacher Francesco Stefani on the island of Lussino, part of the Kingdom of Italy (now part of Croatia as Lošinj ). In 1940 he lived in Zara and in 1942 Fiume , when Istria was still a part of Italy. In 1950 he graduated from the University of Padua in natural sciences under the direction of Umberto D'Ancona . In 1952 he became a lecturer in systematic zoology at the University of Cagliari . In 1958 he became a freelance teacher in zoology and in 1965 the professorship at the University of Sassari . After the death of Celso Guareschi , then director of the Zoological Institute of the University of Cagliari, Stefani was appointed professor of zoology , histology , embryology and comparative anatomy and the new director of the zoological institute in 1966. He retired in early 1994.

Stefani was dedicated to the genre of embioptera ( Embioptera ) and wrote papers on the cytogenetics of Sardinian species as well as about the geographical parthenogenesis of Haploembia Solieri . He also studied the way of life of the brine shrimp ( Artemia salina ). In 1970 , in the publication Contributo alla conoscenza dei formicidi cavernicoli della Sardegna, he described the Sardinian ant taxon Ponera sulcitana , which is now considered a synonym for the species Hypoponera punctatissima . From a herpetological point of view, he dealt with the lungless salamanders of Sardinia, of which he first described the two species Speleomantes flavus and Speleomantes imperialis in 1969 .

Stefani was a member of the Senckenberg Natural Research Society in Frankfurt am Main , the Società Entomologica Italiana and the New York Academy of Sciences . In 1960 he was awarded the Premio Battista Grassi of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei .

literature

• Prof. Renzo Stefani, insigne naturalista In: LussinO Quadrimestre, No. 25, December 2007, p. 4 (obituary, Italian)
• Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, Michael Grayson: The Eponym Dictionary of Amphibians. Pelagic Publishing, Exeter, 2013. ISBN 978-1-907807-41-1 , p. 204