How many Neotropical malacologists are there?
18-11-2008 16:54
No, I don’t consider myself as a Neotropical
malacologist. Rather I see myself as a Dutch
malacologist working on Neotropical snails. So, how
many truly Neotropical malacologists are there?
To find only the beginning of the answer I quickly scanned the reference work for biohistory on malacology (Coan et al. 2007). There are over 7000 names listed, of which slightly over 250 are connected to the Neotropics, i.e. either the person was born and lived in Latin America or lived part of their life there. Some remarkable numbers turned up:
Of course, there may be some easy explanations of the differences. Local malacologists with an interest in malacohistory is surely one of them. Of course, they should publish about it, preferably with accurate data (there are still many voids in Coan’s listing). Secondly, the inclusion -or not- of a name in the work of Coan et al. is clearly haphazard. But I think the peak of malacologists in Uruguay is probably also due to the existence of an active malacological society. Organisational structure may thus be considered as a third factor.
As far as I know, the regularly scheduled CLAMA congresses are not based on membership (I would opt for it if this was possible). But it would be interesting to see if the attendance during the congresses organized so far does reflect the pattern in the figures above. And how many new names would turn up. We should coddle them, because they are still too rare a species.
Reference:
Coan, E. V., A.R. Kabat & R.E. Petit. (2007). 2400 years of malacology (4th ed., rev.). American Malacological Society.
To find only the beginning of the answer I quickly scanned the reference work for biohistory on malacology (Coan et al. 2007). There are over 7000 names listed, of which slightly over 250 are connected to the Neotropics, i.e. either the person was born and lived in Latin America or lived part of their life there. Some remarkable numbers turned up:
Of course, there may be some easy explanations of the differences. Local malacologists with an interest in malacohistory is surely one of them. Of course, they should publish about it, preferably with accurate data (there are still many voids in Coan’s listing). Secondly, the inclusion -or not- of a name in the work of Coan et al. is clearly haphazard. But I think the peak of malacologists in Uruguay is probably also due to the existence of an active malacological society. Organisational structure may thus be considered as a third factor.
As far as I know, the regularly scheduled CLAMA congresses are not based on membership (I would opt for it if this was possible). But it would be interesting to see if the attendance during the congresses organized so far does reflect the pattern in the figures above. And how many new names would turn up. We should coddle them, because they are still too rare a species.
Reference:
Coan, E. V., A.R. Kabat & R.E. Petit. (2007). 2400 years of malacology (4th ed., rev.). American Malacological Society.