Walter Verheyen
Walter Norbert Verheyen (born December 15, 1932 in Wilrijk , Belgium ; † December 29, 2005 in Edegem , Belgium) was a Belgian mammaloge . His research focus was the African small mammal fauna .
Life
After studying zoology at the University of Ghent , Verheyen received his doctorate in 1959 with the dissertation Bijdrage tot de Craniologie van de primate genera Colobus Illiger 1911 and Cercopithecus Linnaeus 1758 (contribution to the craniology of the primate genera Colobus Illiger 1911 and Cercopithecus Linnaeus 1758). In 1958 he became a research assistant at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren . From 1962 to 1965 he taught at Ghent University. In 1965 he became a professor at the Rijksuniversitair Centrum Antwerp (now the University of Antwerp ). Verheyen was a member of several professional societies, member of the editorial board of numerous professional journals and chairman and director of laboratories and national commissions in the fields of zoology, nature conservation and biology. He organized numerous scientific expeditions, including to Zaire , Togo , Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Morocco , Algeria , South Africa , Ghana , Rwanda , Burundi , Gabon , Tanzania , Kenya and Papua New Guinea . In the late 1980s, Verheyen was working as the head of a Belgian research project on rodents in Tanzania. Verheyen described several new rodent species from the genera of the brush hair mice ( Lophuromys ), shaggy swamp rats ( Dasymys ), mice ( Mus ) and the African soft rats ( Praomys ), the two shrew species Crocidura desperata and Sylvisorex vulcanorum), and subspecies of the owl- headed monkey ( Cercus monkey ) Angola Colobus ( Colobus angolensis prigoginei ), the Blue monkey ( Cercopithecus mitis heymansi ) and the Central African Colobus ( Piliocolobus foai parmentierorum ). Verheyen's first monograph Bijdrage tot de Craniometrie van Colobus badius (Kerr 1792) , published in 1957, deals with the variety of skulls in colobus monkeys (Colibini). This monograph contains an extensive morphological and morphometric study of the colobus monkeys of the Congo Basin , in particular a discussion of the results with regard to phylogeny , taxonomy and biogeography . To do this, Verheyen examined 115 skulls from the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the Museum of Natural Sciences , examined 69 skull diameters and described the morphological variation of the important structural areas such as the surfaces of the forehead suture and the skull capsule. In 1962, Verheyen published in his book Contribution a la craniologie comparee des Primates. Les genres Colobus Illiger 1811 et Cercopithecus Linnaeus 1758 an extensive study of the differences between colobus and vervet monkeys . In this work he looks at the wide taxonomic variation of the genera Colobus and Cercopithecus with a large system of measurement data to make comparisons with regard to sexual dimorphism , phylogeny, and ontogeny . For this study, the skulls of 1085 adult and 303 adolescent animals were analyzed from collections in museums in Brussels , Tervuren, London , New York City , Birchington-on-Sea , Paris , Leiden , Ghent and Berlin . In addition to his work with mammals, Verheyen wrote a book about the Congo peacock .
Taxa named after Verheyen
In 2001 Rainer Hutterer , Patrick Barriere and Marc Colyn honored Verheyen with the epithet of the Little Congo Shrew ( Congosorex bescheyeni ). In 2008 Violaine Nicolas, Wim Wendelen, Patrick Barriere, Akaibe Dudu and Marc Colyn named the taxon Hylomyscus walterverheyeni from the genus of the African wood mice ( Hylomyscus ) after Verheyen. In 2009 Graphiurus walterverheyeni from the genus of the African dormouse ( Grahiurus ) was named after Verheyen. In 2010 Erik Verheyen named the Verheyen Ducker ( Philantomba walteri ) after his father, who discovered this species in Togo in 1968 .
literature
- Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, Michael Grayson: The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals JHU Press, 2009, ISBN 9780801893049 : p. 428
- Emiliano Bruner: From Verheyen to Bookstein: history of colobids and superimpositions In: Journal of Anthropological Sciences, Vol. 84 (2006), pp. 147–160 (with a biographical entry about Verheyen on p. 149)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Verheyen, Walter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Verheyen, Walter Norbert (full name); Verheyen, WN; Verheyen, Walter N. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian Mammaloge |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 15, 1932 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wilrijk , Belgium |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 29, 2005 |
| Place of death | Edegem , Belgium |