Paul Bartsch

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Paul Bartsch
underwater cameras
Scientific career
FieldsMalacology, carcinology
InstitutionsGeorge Washington University and National Museum of Natural History

Paul Bartsch (14 August 1871

carcinologist.[1] He was named the last of those belonging to the "Descriptive Age of Malacology".[2]

Early life

Bartsch emigrated with his parents to the

natural-history club in his home with a little museum and a workshop. By the time he went to the University of Iowa
in 1893, he had collected 2,000 skins.

Among Bartsch′s professors at the university were the

Charles C. Nutting. He graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1896, a Master of Science degree in 1899, and a PhD in 1905.[3]

Career

In 1896 Bartsch was invited by

Mollusks. At that time, Bartsch knew little about mollusks and expected more to make ornithology
his life work.

In 1899 Bartsch became an instructor in

professor emeritus
.

In 1901 Bartsch became lecturer on

bird banding, the first to do so in modern times.[4] In 1903 he became director of the physiology laboratory and lecturer
in medical zoology. he continued in this capacity for 37 years.

In 1914 Bartsch became curator at the National Museum of Natural History of the combined divisions of Mollusks and Marine Invertebrates. As his workload became too heavy, the two divisions, which had been separate before he became curator, were separated again in 1920. Bartsch continued as curator of the mollusk division until 1945.[5]

underwater camera
in 1926

In 1922, Bartsch invented an

underwater camera
.

In 1956 Bartsch retired from the Smithsonian Institution after more than 50 years of service. He retreated into his estate on the Potomac River shore at Mason's Neck, below Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He spent his time in turning the estate into a wildlife sanctuary.

Bartsch′s papers are held at the George Washington University.[6]

Scientific contributions

At first Bartsch′s works as an assistant of W. H. Dall consisted in cataloguing, together with

west coast of the United States
. Also in 1905 he became assistant curator at the Smithsonian Institution.

Between 1903 and 1907 he published twelve papers on land and freshwater shells, showing his interest in Philippine land snails and in the family Urocoptidae in America.

On 9 October 1907, Bartsch left from

Philippine Islands and the China Seas on an expedition to collect specimens of marine and non-marine snails. Over 87,000 specimens were cataloged, many of which still[when?] have to be studied.[7] Bartsch left the expedition at Hong Kong after ten months and traveled home via Europe, arriving in Washington, D.C., in October 1908. In 1909 he published, with Dall as co-author, his monograph
on the West American Pyramidellidae. This was followed by twelve papers on the same subject between 1910 and 1912.

In 1915 Bartsch published, after five years of preparation, his study of South African marine mollusks, initiated by the donation by William H. Turton of his collection in 1906.

In February and April 1909 Bartsch was aboard Albatross for a voyage along the Pacific coast of North America from San Diego, California, to the Baja California peninsula. This resulted in another collection of mollusks and other invertebrates.

In May 1912 Bartsch was invited on an expedition to the

motor vessel Anton Dohrn. He became intrigued by the variety of the halophilic land snail genus Cerion
. His study and later experiments resulted in 1920 in the publication of the paper Experiments in the Breeding of Cerions, Papers from the Department of Marine Biology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 14 (282).

Another expedition occurred in May and June 1914 aboard the schooner Thomas Barrera in the waters of Cuba. This made a lasting impression on Bartsch and led to his later expeditions to the Greater and Lesser Antilles, resulting in several publications on West Indian land snails.

In 1916, at the request of the United States Navy, Bartsch started a study of shipworms. He suggested several novel procedures against these boring clams in his paper Report on the Marine Boring Mollusks in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Public Works of the Navy under the Cognizance of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Corps of Civil Engineers, U.S. Navy. Navy Department Bureau of Yards and Docks Bulletin, 28:48-50. This was followed in the coming years by many other studies on the same subject.

In the following years he continued his travels to the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, Cuba. and the West Indies. During these expeditions more than a half million mollusks were collected, as well as many marine invertebrates, fish, birds, and reptiles.

In 1927 Bartsch started his study of the large

gastropod family Turridae. Between 1934 and 1950 he wrote eight papers on various genera
in this family.

Between 1923 and 1939 Bartsch published several papers on intermediate snail hosts of the Asiatic blood fluke Schistosoma japonicum.

In October 1932

Carnegie Institution, and the Oceanographic Institution of Woods Hole.[8] In addition to the scientific party, Johnson and his son, E. R. Fenimore Johnson, who had helped prepare the yacht, and invited guest went with the expedition.[8][9][10] Aside from the description and addition to collections of new species, three lines of echo soundings were gathered across the trench with the U.S. Navy echo sounding device operated by Thomas Townsend Brown and water samples were taken at various depths.[8][11]

Between 1937 and 1941 Bartsch studied, jointly with the Cuban malacologist Don Carlos de la Torre, the Cuban land snail fauna. This resulted in a number of papers on the families Annulariidae, Helicinidae, and Urocoptidae.[12]

Species named by Bartsch

Paul Bartsch proposed 3278 taxa, 2,979 of which are of new species and subspecies, and 299 are supraspecific names. Of these 1257 were published together with another author. These taxa, except three, were all mollusks.[12]

See also Category:Taxa named by Paul Bartsch

Taxa named in honor of Bartsch

The species Bartsch's squid (Uroteuthis bartschi ) was named in his honor by Harald A. Rehder.

The World Register of Marine Species lists 61 taxa with the epithet bartschi, many of which have become synonyms.[13]

A species (Anolis bartschi) and a subspecies (Cyclura carinata bartschi) of Caribbean lizards were named in Bartsch′s honor.[14]

The Mariana swiftlet (Aerodramus bartschi) was named in honor of Bartsch by Edgar Alexander Mearns in 1909.[15]

References

Citations

  1. ^ "Paul Bartsch, 1871–1960 | the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland".
  2. ^ Boss, Kenneth J., Joseph Rosewater, and Florence A. Ruhoff, 1968. The Zoological Taxa of William Healey Dall. United States National Museum Bulletin 287, 427 pages, 2 November
  3. ^ "Bartsch, R." inhs.uiuc.edu. Archived from the original on 5 November 1999.
  4. ^ "Bird Banding Laboratory".
  5. ^ Florence A. Ruhoff (1973), Bibliography and Zoological Taxa of Paul Bartsch, Biographical Sketch by Harald A. Rehder, Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, Number 143
  6. ^ Guide to the Paul Bartsch Papers, 1894-1945 Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University.
  7. ^ Bartsch, Paul. "Notes and description of specimens collected on the Philippine Expedition of the Steamer Albatross, circa 1908". biodiversitylibrary.org. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
  8. ^ a b c d "Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution". Smithsonian Institution. 1933: 1, 6–7, 74. Retrieved 21 October 2018. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. ^ Paul Schatzkin, Defying Gravity: The Paraellel Universe of T. Townsend Brown, 2005-2006-2007-2008 – Tanglewood Books, Chapter 30 – The Caroline
  10. ^ "Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution". Smithsonian Institution. 1934: 10. Retrieved 21 October 2018. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. ^ "Station Records of the First Johnson-Smithsonian Deep-Sea Expedition". Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. 91 (1). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. 1934. Retrieved 21 October 2018. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. ^ a b Florence A. Ruhoff (1973), Bibliography and Zoological Taxa of Paul Bartsch, Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, Number 143
  13. ^ WORMS: taxa with the epithet "bartschi"
  14. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5
    . ("Bartsch", p. 18).
  15. ISBN 9781472982698
    .

Bibliography

External links

Smithsonian Institution Archives
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Paul Bartsch.
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