Aleksei Alekseevich Zachvatkin (Алексея Алексеевича Захваткина) (until 1931 with the surname Jasykov or Yazykov) (1 December 1905 - 14 December 1950) was a Russian entomologist and

acarologist Acarology (from Ancient Greek /, , a type of mite; and , ) is the study of mites and ticks, the animals in the order Acarina. It is a subfield of arachnology, a subdiscipline of the field of zoology. A zoologist specializing in acarology is cal ...

who worked on leafhoppers and mites. Aleksei was born in a Russian noble family in

Ekaterinburg Yekaterinburg ( ; rus, Екатеринбург, p=jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnˈburk), alternatively romanized as Ekaterinburg and formerly known as Sverdlovsk ( rus, Свердло́вск, , svʲɪrˈdlofsk, 1924–1991), is a city and the administrat ...

and grew up in

Montreux, Switzerland Montreux (, , ; frp, Montrolx) is a Swiss municipality and town on the shoreline of Lake Geneva at the foot of the Alps. It belongs to the district of Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland, and has a population of approxima ...

, educated by private tutors. The family moved to Moscow just before World War I and he went to study at the

State University of Moscow M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

. An interest in natural history led to work at the university herbarium and then at the zoological museum. He took an interest in the cicadas but the October revolution of 1917 and his wealthy background meant that he could not join university. He however attended some classes informally and studied painting. In 1926 he joined the Central Asian Institute of Plant Protection as an assistant and travelled on several expeditions. Among his discoveries were of

hypermetamorphosis Hypermetamorphosis, or heteromorphosis,P.J. Gullan & P.S. Cranston. 2010. The Insects: An Outline of Entomology, 4th Edition. Wiley-Blackwell. is a term used in entomology that refers to a class of variants of holometabolism, that is to say, com ...

in the Meloidae and

Bombyliidae The Bombyliidae are a family of flies, commonly known as bee flies. Adults generally feed on nectar and pollen, some being important pollinators. Larvae are mostly parasitoids of other insects. Overview The Bombyliidae are a large family of fl ...

. His last publication under the name of Jasykov was published in 1931. After being held hostage by counter-revolutionaries during an expedition and losing his identification papers, he took on the name of step-father and subsequently published under the name of Zachvatkin. He moved to the All Union Institute of Plant Protection, Leningrad and then moved in 1933 to the entomological laboratory of the State University of Moscow. He studied Tyroglyphidae (Acarina) and obtained a Ph.D. in 1935 and a Doctor of Biological Sciences in 1939. He then became a professor of entomology at Moscow. His work on mites led him to propose in 1952, based on the development of the fourth pair of legs, the classification of the Acarina into Acariformes, Parasitiformes, and Opiliocarina. He received the Stalin Prize twice but clashed with followers of Trofim Lysenko. His son Yuri A. Zachvatkin also became an entomologist. His major books were ''Tyroglyphoid mites (Tyroglyphoidea)'' (1941) and ''Comparative embryology of lower invertebrates'' (1949). Some of his lectures and manuscripts were published posthumously in 1953 by his friends and students. A number of mite genera are named in his honour including '' Zachvatkinia'' and '' Zachvatkinella'' .

References

External links

Moscow State University biography (in Russian, with portrait)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zachvatkin, Alexsei Soviet entomologists Moscow State University faculty 1905 births 1950 deaths Expatriates from the Russian Empire in Switzerland