Charles Des Moulins, full name Charles Robert Alexandre Des Moulins (13 March 1798 – 23 December 1875) was a French naturalist, a
botanist and
malacologist
Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, ...
.
He was a member of several learned societies, including the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
, which elected him an international Member in 1861, and the ''Société linnéenne de Bordeaux'', of which he served as its president in 1826.
Taxa
Moulins named and described numerous
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
of
snail
A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class G ...
s, for example:
* ''
Pagodulina pagodula'' (Des Moulins, 1830)
In turn, in recognition of his services to malacology, a number of species of
mollusk
Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...
s were named after him. These latter species included both fossil and recent, both
bivalves and
gastropods and were mainly non-marine species, however, a few were marine species. Examples as follows:
* ''
Pisania desmoulinsi'' Montrouzier, 186
a marine gastropod
* ''
Anodonta desmoulinsiana'' Locard, 188
a freshwater bivalve
* ''
Nerita desmoulinsiana'' Dautzenberg & Bouge, 1933, a marine gastropod
* ''
Vertigo moulinsiana'' Dupuy, 1849, a terrestrial gastropod
Moulins also named various species of plants, including:
* ''
Euphorbia milii
''Euphorbia milii'', the crown of thorns, Christ plant, or Christ thorn, is a species of flowering plant in the spurge family Euphorbiaceae, native to Madagascar. The species name commemorates Baron Milius, once Governor of Réunion, who introdu ...
'' Des Moulins, 182
The botanical genus ''Moulinsia'' (family
Sapindaceae) was named in his honor by
Jacques Cambessèdes.
Bibliography
* 1831: ''Etudes s. l. Echinides'
* 1840
''Catalogue raisonné des plantes qui croissent spontanément dans le département de la Dordogne. distribuées d'après le synopsis florae Germanicae et Helveticae du docteur G.D.J. Koch'' Bordeaux : Th. Lafargue.
* 1859: ''Comparaison des départements de la Gironde et de la Dordogne sous le rapport de leur végétation spontanée et de leurs cultures''.
* 1869: ''Quelques réflexions sur la doctrine scientifique dite Darwinisme''.
Quelques réflexions sur la doctrine scientifique dite Darwinisme
OCLC WorldCat
References
1798 births
1875 deaths
19th-century French botanists
French malacologists
{{France-zoologist-stub