William Henry Burt

William Henry Burt (born January 22, 1903 in Haddam , Kansas , † December 4, 1987 ) was an American zoologist . His main field of research was the formation and behavior of the territory, as well as the evolution and morphology of mammals .

biography

As a teenager, William Henry Burt observed prairie dogs on the family farm. After studying at the University of Kansas he obtained in 1926 his Bachelor of Arts and in 1927 the Master of Arts . In 1927 he wrote his first professional article entitled A Simple Live Trap for Small Mammals in the Journal of Mammalogy . From 1928 to 1931 Burt accompanied the zoologist and nature photographer Donald Ryder Dickey on research trips to Arizona, Baja California and Mexico . In 1930 he received his Ph. D. from the University of California, Berkeley . From 1931 to 1935 he was a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology . During that time he undertook expeditions to the islands in the Gulf of California and discovered rodent taxa such as the bush rat species Neotoma bunkeri or the Pemberton deer vole , both of which are now considered extinct. In 1935 he became Professor of Zoology at the University of Michigan and Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Zoology. In the following years he studied the mammalian fauna in Sonora (1938-1941), Michigan (1940-1948), the Great Lakes (1956) and El Salvador (1961). He also researched the vertebrates around the Mexican volcano Paricutín . After his retirement in 1969 he became Professor Emeritus and Curator at the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan.

Works (selection)

• Adaptive Modifications in the Woodpeckers University of California . Berkeley. Museum of Vertebrate Zoology 1930
• Machaerodus Catoccopis Cope from the Pliocene of Texas University of California Press . 1931
• Faunal relationships and geographic distribution of mammals in Sonora. Mexico . University of Michigan Press 1938
• A field guide to the mammals, giving field marks of all species found north of the Mexican boundary . Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1952.
• Mammals of the Great Lakes Region (with Allen Kurta). University of Michigan Press 1957 (reprinted 1995). ISBN 0472064975
• Bacula of North American Mammals . University of Michigan 1960
• The Mammals of El Salvador . 1961 (with Ruben Arthur Stirton)
• A field guide to the mammals: North America north of Mexico . Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1976. ISBN 0395240824

literature

• Illar Muul: William Henry Burt: 1903-1987 In: Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Feb. 1990), pp. 113-116