William Doherty

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]

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]

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]

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]

  1. ^ Janson, Oliver E. (1901). Obituary - William Doherty . The Zoologist, 4th series, vol. 5, issue 724 (October, 1901), pp. 386/7 – via Wikisource.
  2. ^ Novitates Zoologicae v8 (1901) pp.494-506 Obituary by Ernst Hartert [includes bibliography]
  3. ^ a b c Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2014). The Eponym Dictionary of Birds. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1472905741.
  4. ^ Holland, W.J. (1902) Obituary. Entomological News 13:63-65.
  5. ^ LeCroy, M (2003). "Type Specimens of Birds in the American Museum of Natural History Part 5. Passeriformes: Alaudidae, Hirundinidae, Motacillidae, Campephagidae, Pycnonotidae, Irenidae, Laniidae, Vangidae, Bombycillidae, Dulidae, Cinclidae, Troglodytidae, And Mimidae" (PDF). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. American Museum of Natural History. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 8, 2005. Retrieved 2007-06-09.

External links[edit]

  • 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.