Norman I. Platnick

Ira Norman Platnick ( born December 30, 1951 in Bluefield, West Virginia) is an American professor emeritus of Arachnology and curator of the Department of Zoology of Invertebrates the American Museum of Natural History ( AMNH ). He received his PhD in 1973 at Harvard University and described thousands of arachnids from around the world.

His fame thanks also to the World Spider Catalog, which he built up online on behalf of the AMNH and operates. The catalog is the only current resource for described species of spiders. He is unique in its claim to contain a world full species list, to examine the results of all work, summarize and taxonomically classified. All today wrote scientific descriptions and redefinitions are there taxonomically ordered to find. For this work of " invaluable " he was awarded the Pierre Bonnet Award for Devoted Service to the Advancement of the International Society of Arachnology Arachnology 2007.

In other scientists together also he worked on an image-based detection system, SPIDA web. The Atlas of phylogenetic data for entelegyne spiders created in collaboration with Griswold, Ramírez and Coddington.

As a professor, he has taught since 1978 at the City University of New York, and since 1988 at Cornell University. At Columbia University, he is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation since 1999 worked.

Research

His dissertation, " A revision of the North American Spiders of the Family Anyphaenidae " he introduced before 1973.

His focus was mainly on the ground-dwelling Gnaphosiden Australasia. Together with two other partners, he has written monographs on Australasian representatives of seven families. At the start of work on Lamponiden it was estimated that the species of one genus Lampona described previously 17 represented 20% of the Lamponidae family. In fact, however, the team found 171 additional species they arranged in 22 genera in two subfamilies. The monograph of Lamponidae includes printed 330 pages and is available on the web; the family ever since regarded as the most diverse spider family in Australia.

By the end of 2011, he will finish one of the National Science Foundation with more than $ 2 million supported research projects under the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory to describe the Oonopidae - members. 30 arachnologists are involved. It is estimated that worldwide there are instead of the 500 species described so far 2500 species with very small areas of distribution, about whom nothing is known. The work will also be expected findings that serve not only to protect the species, but also provide information for historical biogeographic evolution of the Earth.

In addition, he co-authored a number of publications with other arachnologists, including not only posts about True spiders, but also about tarantulas and hood -like spiders; and taxonomy by DNA analysis.

Swell

• Platnicks biography on the sides of the AMNH
• Richard Gilder Graduate School: Faculty Profile of Norman I. Platnick.