Roger W. Barbour

Roger William Barbour (born April 5, 1919 in Morehead , Kentucky , † August 26, 1993 in Lexington , Kentucky) was an American vertebrate zoologist, herpetologist , naturalist and nature photographer . His main interests were the amphibians and reptiles of Kentucky.

Life

Barbour was the son of John William and Laura Barbour, née Hall. He comes from a farming family. He spent most of his youth in the nearby hills and woods of his hometown of Morehead in northeastern Kentucky. At the age of 15, he enrolled in Morehead State Teachers College (now Morehead State University ), where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1938 . His mentor was the zoology professor Wilfred A. Welter (1906-1939), who introduced him to the study of ornithology and herpetology and after whom he named the salamander Desmognathus welteri in 1950 . In December 1938 he married Bernice Lewis. From this marriage a daughter and two sons were born. In 1939 he graduated under the direction of Arthur Augustus Allen in ornithology at Cornell University to the Master of Science. Soon afterwards he began a doctorate with Albert H. Wright (1879-1970) at Cornelly University, which was interrupted by the Second World War.

While waiting to be called up, Barbour taught college in Kentucky. He served in the US Army from 1945 to 1946 and then returned to Cornell. Since there was no more space in Wright's laboratory, Barbour switched to the mammalogen William J. Hamilton, Jr. (1902-1990), under whose direction he was in 1949 with a dissertation on mammals, amphibians and reptiles on Big Black Mountain in the coal region of Harlan County in southeastern Kentucky for a Ph.D. received his doctorate.

From 1949 to 1950 he was a science teacher in Wheeling , West Virginia and then he went to the University of Kentucky at Lexington, where he was an instructor until 1952, an assistant professor from 1952 to 1956, an associate professor from 1956 to 1968 and from 1968 to 1968 when he retired in 1984 he was a full professor.

Barbour was primarily a herpetologist and mammalogist . However, he wrote about other wildlife as well . Among his non-herpetological works include books on the bats of North America, through the bushes and trees of Kentucky, the wildflowers and ferns Kentucky, the Kentucky mammals and birds as well as the basic perch (Darter) of North America. Between 1940 and 1994 he published over 90 specialist articles, including 35 articles on amphibians and reptiles. In his articles, Barbour dealt with the systematics, distribution, way of life, feeding behavior and ecology of the reptiles and amphibians of Kentucky. He has published twelve books, including five works in the herpetological field, Amphibians and Reptiles of Kentucky (1971), Turtles of the United States (1972, with Carl H. Ernst ), and Snakes of Eastern North America (1989, with Carl H. Ernst ), Turtles of the World (1989, with Carl H. Ernst) and Turtles of the United States and Canada (1994, with Carl H. Ernst and Jeffrey E. Lovich ). Barbour was also an excellent wildlife photographer, and his color and black and white photos of wildlife and plants can be found throughout his work.

Dedication names

In 1989, Fred Kraus and James W. Petranka Barbour honored the species epithet of the salamander species Ambystoma barbouri , which occurs in the midwestern United States.

Fonts

• with Wayne H. Davis : Bats of America , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1969.
• Amphibians and Reptiles of Kentucky , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1971.
• with Mary E. Wharton : A Guide to the Wildflowers and Ferns of Kentucky , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1971.
• with Carl H. Ernst: Turtles of the United States , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1972.
• with Clell T. Peterson, Delbert Rust, Herbert E. Shadowen, AL Whitt, Jr .: Kentucky Birds: A Finding Guide , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1973.
• with Mary E. Wharton: Trees and Shrubs of Kentucky , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1973.
• with Wayne H. Davis: Mammals of Kentucky , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1974.
• with Robert A. Kuehne: The American Darters , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1983.
• with Carl H. Ernst: Turtles of the World , Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1989.
• with Carl H. Ernst: Snakes of Eastern North America , George Mason University Press, Fairfax, VA, 1989.
• with Mary E. Wharton: Bluegrass Land and Life: Land Character, Plants, and Animals of the Inner Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, Past, Present, and Future , University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1991.
• with Carl H. Ernst and Jeffrey E. Lovich: Turtles of the United States and Canada , Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1994.

literature

• Carl H. Ernst: Roger William Barbour, April 5, 1919-26 Aug. 1993 In: Copeia , Volume 1994, No. 2, American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH), May 16, 1994, pp. 569-572
• Roger W (illiam) Barbour. In: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002. Gale In Context: Biography, accessed November 27, 2019
• Kraig Adler: Contributions to the History of Herpetology. Volume 2. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 2007, ISBN 978-091698-471-7 , pp. 208-209

Web links

• Literature by and about Roger W. Barbour in the WorldCat bibliographic database