ESS 345 Ichthyology
History of Ichthyology:
Important Names
Ch. 1 Moyle and Cech
Ch. 1 Stauffer et al. 2016
Aristotle
384-322 BCE
115 species of fish
Peter Artedi (1705-1734)
Father of Ichthyology
Good friend of Linnaeus
Drowned one night after dinner
Carl Linne (Linnaeus) (1707-1778)
Swedish botanist
Father of modern taxonomy
– Systema Naturae – system for classification of
plants
– Developed the binomial naming system
Published Artedi’s fish work
George Cuvier (1769-1832)
First to list fishes of the world
Opposed Lamarck
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
Paleontolist, geologist, biologist
Studied under Cuvier
Worked on fossil fish
Moved to US, Harvard U
Founded the Museum of Comparative
Zoology
Opposed Darwin
Academy of Natural Sciences
Philadelphia
Most early research occurred here
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
(1783 – 1840)
Eastern US, collected animals / plants
Surveyed Ohio R fishes (Ichthyologia
Ohioensis (1820)
Made professor of Transylvania U after
long collecting trip
Prolific namer
Samuel Latham Mitchell (1764 – 1831)
First book about NA species
Fishes of New York (1815)
Brook trout as fish of PA
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
On the origin of species (1859)
Grouped species by common origin
Albert Gunther (1830-1914)
Fishes of the world
Catalogue of Fishes in British Museum
Classified by resemblances (not evolution)
President of the Linnean Society
– Taxonomy and natural history
Others
• Jarad Kirtland (1793-1877) Ohio River fishes, unraveled Rafinesque’s
confusion in Ichthyologia Ohioensis
•
Spencer Baird (1823-1887) first commissioner of the U.S. Fish
Commission, Dickinson College
• Charles Girard (1822-1895) studied Cottidae and worked with Agassiz and
Baird
• Henry Fowler (1878-1965): many papers on fishes in PA, very important
collection at ANS
• David Starr Jordan (1851 – 1931) President of Stanford U
• Fishes of North and Middle America
David Starr Jordan (1851-1931)
Father of North American Ichthyology
Published numerous papers
Many productive students
Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897)
Contemporary of Jordan
Paleontologist
300 fish species
Copeia (ASIH Journal)
First description of fishes of PA
Carl Hubbs (1894-1979)
Star of the mid 1900s, > 700 publications
Father of modern ichthyology
Student of Jordan
Fishes of the Great Lakes
Fisheries management and improvement
of lakes for fishing
Leopold’s counterpart??
Did PhD while working as fish curator at
Museum of Zoology at U of Michigan
Carl Hubbs
Recent
William Minckley: Fishes of AZ (1973)
K. Lagler – Ichthyology (textbook, 1977)
Milton Trautman - Fishes of Ohio
Ed Cooper (1919-2009) – Fishes of PA;
professor at PSU
Ed Raney – distribution of fishes in w PA;
many students
R. Ross – Zoogeography of the Central
Appalachians
Recent
Robert Denoncourt: YCP, fishes of
Susquehanna
L. Page, B. Burr 1992 - Peterson Field Guide
David Etnier and Wayne Starnes – Fishes of
Tennessee (1993)
William Eschmeyer – Catalog of Fishes (1998);
most recent effort to document world genera
William Pflieger – Fishes of Missouri (1998)
Recent
Robert Denoncourt, Charles Hocutt –
distribution & ecology of C. Appalachian
fishes
J. R. Stauffer – Fishes of West Virginia
(1995), …of Pennsylvania (2016)
Robert Jenkins – Fishes of Virginia (1994)
Edward Raney
Jenkins
Ross
Stauffer
Denoncourt
Many others