Roberto Dabbene

Roberto Raúl Dabbene (born January 17, 1864 in Turin , Italy , † October 20, 1938 in La Plata , Argentina ) was an Italian-Argentine ornithologist .

Live and act

Dabbene was born in the Porta Susa district of Turin. In 1885 he received his doctorate in natural sciences with the dissertation Gli organi di sostegno negli animali invertebrati at the University of Genoa . In 1887 he moved to Argentina, where he initially taught chemistry at the National University of Cordoba . He then worked at the Polytechnic Museum. In 1890 Dabbene received a job from director Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg (1852–1937) at the Buenos Aires Zoo , where he studied bird studies. In 1900 he was appointed curator of the bird department by Carlos Berg , then director of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia in Buenos Aires, where Dabbene worked until a few years before his death. In 1902 he visited Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego , where he collected 43 samples from 23 different bird species and met the now extinct Selk'nam ethnic group .

Dabbene was one of the founding members of the Sociedad Ornitologica del Plata (today: Aves Argentinas ), where he was president for the first time from 1916 to 1922, the year it was founded, and again from 1924 to 1926. He published numerous scientific articles in the bird journal El Hornero , the organ of this society. He also wrote for the Anales del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires , the magazine Revista Chilena de Historia Natural and for Physis , an Argentine magazine that deals with the Argentine avifauna . In 1919 Dabbene became a foreign member of the British Ornithologists' Union .

Dabbene described some South American bird species and subspecies. In 1913, together with Miguel Lillo , he wrote the first scientific descriptions of the subspecies Cyanoliseus patagonus andinus of the rock parakeet and of the subspecies Eudromia elegans intermedia of the guinea fowl . In 1917 he erstbeschrieb the Altiplano Erdhacker ( Geositta punensis ), the same year the subspecies Cinclodes oustaletti hornensis of gray flanks bank Wippers and Cinclodes antarcticus maculirostris of monochrome shore Wippers . In 1921 he published the first scientific description of the Blue-throated Macaw ( Ara glaucogularis ). In 1926 he first mentioned the Tristan albatross under the name Diomedea chionoptera alexanderi . Since the epithet alexanderi was assigned by Gregory Mathews for a subspecies of the gray-headed albatross as early as 1916 , Mathews made a new description of the Tristan albatross under the scientific name Diomedea dabbenena and honored Dabbene in the specific epithet.

Dedication names

In addition to the Tristan albatross already mentioned, the red-faced Guan ( Penelope dabbenei ) was named after Dabbene by Carl Eduard Hellmayr and Henry Boardman Conover in 1942 . Also in the subspecies of Blaßstirnkauzes ( Aegolius harrisii dabbenei Olrog , 1979), the Hellmayr Pieper ( Anthus hellmayri dabbenei Hellmayr , 1921), the Southern white-bellied tree climber ( Lepidocolaptes angustirostris dabbenei Esteban , 1948) and the strip apex Ammer ( Rhynchospiza strigiceps dabbenei Hellmayr , 1912) there are dedications for dabbene. In 1914, Oldfield honored Thomas Dabbene in the specific epithet of the great American bulldog bat ( Eumops dabbenei ).

Publications (selection)

• Fauna Magallánica. Mamíferos y aves de la Tierra del Fuego e islas adyacentes , 1902
• Viaje á la Tierra del Fuego y á la Isla de los Estados , 1903
• Ornitología argentina: catálogo sistemático y descriptivo de las aves de la República Argentina, de las regiones limítrofes inmediatas del Brasil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile y los archipiélagos é islas al sur y sureste del continente americano hasta el círculo polar antártico. Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires, 1910.
• Los indigenas de la Tierra del Fuego: Contribución a la etnografia y anthopologia de los Fueguiros , 1911
• Contribución a la Ornitología del Paraguay , Anales del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires 23, 1912: p. 283-390
• Notas sobre una colección de Avesde la Isla Martín García , El Hornero 1, 1917. (1): 29-34; (2): 89-96; (3): 160-168; (4): 236-248.
• Los pingüinos de las costas e islas de los mares argentinos , El Hornero 2 (1), 1920: p. 1-9
• Tres aves nuevas para la avifauna uruguaya , El Hornero 3 (4), 1926: p. 422
• The ornithological collection of the Museo Nacional, Buenos Aires its origin, development and present condition , The Auk Vol. 43 N. 1, 1926: p. 37-46
• Las palomas y tórtolas de la Argentina , Revista Diosa Cazadora, Suplemento (125), 1938

literature

• El Hornero Volume 7 Número 2 - July 1939 Obituary and bibliography by Roberto Dabbene , pp. 278–284 (Spanish)
• Obituary Roberto Dabbene In: Ibis, Volume 82, Issue 1, 1940, p. 155 (English)
• Biographical entry Roberto Dabbene In: Asociación Argentina de Ciencias Naturales: Physis , Volume 22, Edition 63, 1961, p. 17 (Spanish)
• Biographical entry Roberto Dabbene In: Federico Graef: Gaea: Anales de la Sociedad Argentina de Estudios Geográficos , Volume 16, 1974, p. 99 (Spanish)
• Bo Beolens, Michael Grayson, Michael Watkins: The Eponym Dictionary of Birds. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. (English)

Web links

• Biography (spanish)