William Doherty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

William Doherty (May 15, 1857 in Cincinnati – May 25, 1901 in Nairobi[1]) was an American entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera and later also collected birds for the Natural History Museum at Tring.[2] He died of dysentery while in Nairobi.[3]

Travels

[edit | edit source]
File:Arhopala alitaeus mirabella CRW 5443-01.jpg
Arhopala alitaeus mirabella Doherty, 1889 J. asiat. Soc. Bengal

From 1877 to 1881, before he became a collector, he traveled widely in Europe, the Middle East and thence to Persia. His entomological collecting activities commenced in earnest in 1882 while in South Asia.[3] He collected butterflies in India, Burma, the Andaman Islands, Nicobar, Siam, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea and British East Africa and described many new species. After a visit to Hartert at Tring in 1895, he was recruited by Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, who came to regarded him as his best bird collector.[3] While collecting in Uganda, he fell ill and was carried to a hospital by his Lepcha collectors.[4]

Collections

[edit | edit source]

His collections are shared between the American Museum of Natural History,[5] the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Eponyms

[edit | edit source]

Many of the birds he collected for Lord Rothschild were named after him, including Doherty's bushshrike Malaconotus dohertyi, red-naped fruit dove Ptilinopus dohertyi, Sumba cicadabird Coracina dohertyi and crested white-eye Lophozosterops dohertyi.

References

[edit | edit source]
  1. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  2. ^ Novitates Zoologicae v8 (1901) pp.494-506 Obituary by Ernst Hartert [includes bibliography]
  3. ^ a b c Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  4. ^ Holland, W.J. (1902) Obituary. Entomological News 13:63-65.
  5. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
[edit | edit source]
  • BHL Hartert, Ernst (1896) An account of the collections of birds made by Mr. William Doherty in the Eastern Archipelago London.
  • Obituary by Ernst Hartert (1901) in Novitates Zoologicae, vol. 8, p. 494f.

Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 153: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).