Benedetto Lanza (May 24, 1924,

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

– March 10, 2016, Florence) was an Italian

herpetologist Herpetology (from Greek ἑρπετόν ''herpetón'', meaning "reptile" or "creeping animal") is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians ( gymnophiona)) and rep ...

and chiropterologist. He published over 500 works, with the first one being published in 1946. He described 68 new taxa. He was Professor of Biology and Director of the Natural History Museum at the ''Università degli Studi di Firenze''.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Lanza", p. 151).

Eponyms

Lanza is commemorated in the scientific names of a species and a subspecies of reptiles: '' Chalcides lanzai'' and '' Latastia longicaudata lanzai''. One bat species is also named after him, the Socotran or Lanza's pipistrelle ('' Hypsugo lanzai'').

References

1924 births 2016 deaths Italian herpetologists 20th-century Italian zoologists Scientists from Florence {{Zoologist-stub