Claudius Rey (2 September 1817, in

Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, region, the Pref ...

– 31 January 1895, in Lille) was a French

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

. Rey’s family owned a prosperous

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...

works which went bankrupt in 1847. One of his uncles, the owner of a

vineyard A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineyards ...

producing Morgon, offered him employment. Impassioned by entomology, he began a collaboration with Etienne Mulsant (1797–1880) who was then working on ''Histoire naturelle des coléoptères de France'' - Natural History of the Beetles of France. In 1852, Rey settled in

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...

, in the residence of his brother in Saint-Genis-Laval. He took his Winter holidays in the South of France seeking insects. His work with Mulsant lasted until Mulsant’s death. The majority of the texts on

Staphylinidae The rove beetles are a family (Staphylinidae) of beetles, primarily distinguished by their short elytra (wing covers) that typically leave more than half of their abdominal segments exposed. With roughly 63,000 species in thousands of genera, the ...

are the work of the two entomologists but five parts (Habrocerinae, Tachyporinae, Trichophyinae, Picropeplinae and Steninae) are the work of Rey alone. The Coleoptera are not the only study of Mulsant and Rey since they also worked on naturelle des punaises de France -the Natural history of the

True Bugs Hemiptera (; ) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising over 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. They range in size from to aroun ...

of France. In addition to these publications, Claudius Rey wrote many articles on Coleoptera in journals . He described 8

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

and 48

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 ...

. 116 genera and 407 species bear his name alongside that of Mulsant.

References

*Lee H. Herman (2001). ''Catalog of the Staphylinidae (Insecta: Coleoptera). 1758 to the end of the Second Millennium. I. Introduction, History, Biographical Sketches, and Omaliine Group'', Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 265 : i+vi + 649 p. (ISSN 0003-0090) * Jean Lhoste (1987). ''Les Entomologistes français''. 1750-1950. INRA Éditions : 351 p.homo Translation of article in Wikipedia France French entomologists 1919 deaths 1817 births {{entomologist-stub