Philip Sclater

Philip Sclater Lutley (* November 4, 1829 in Tangier Park, Hampshire, † June 27, 1913 in Odiham, Hampshire ) was an English lawyer and zoologist.

Life and work

Sclater attended the prestigious private school Winchester College and studied at Christ Church College, Oxford University. There he studied ornithology at Hugh Edwin Strickland.

In December 1857 he was the first to scientists in a lecture to the London Linnean Society on the existence of a biogeographical divide between Asian and Australian flora and fauna in the East Indies back. This line was later referred to by the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who formed a valid theory from the facts as the Wallace Line.

1858 Sclater published an essay in the journal Proceedings of the Linnean Society. He compiled six zoological regions, which he called Palaearctisch, Ethiopian, Indian, Australasisch, Nearctisch and Neotropisch. This zoological regions are still valid, but could be clarified by Alfred Russel Wallace.

Because he found lemurs in both East Africa and in India, he suspected the existence of a later submerged continent of Lemuria, of Africa and India should have joined and became one of the main representatives of the land -bridge hypothesis.

He was the founder and publisher of Ibis, the journal of the British Ornithologists ' Union. From 1860 to 1903 he was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London ( Zoological Society of London).

Belonged to Sclater's important works include Exotic Ornithology ( 1866-69 ) and Nomenclator avium (1873 ), both with Osbert Salvin, Argentine Ornithology ( 1888-89 ) William Henry Hudson and The Book of Antelopes ( 1894-1900 ) with Oldfield Thomas.

Several animal species (identified sclateri on Artbeinamen or sclateriana ) by Philip Sclater been named, such as the crown penguin ( Eudyptes sclateri ) and the White-tailed monal ( Lophophorus sclateri ).