Emil Selenka (27 February, 1842,

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...

– 20 February, 1902,

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

) was a German

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ...

. He is known for his research on

invertebrates Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordat ...

and apes and the scientific expeditions he organized to Southeast Asia and South America.

Life

Selenka was the son of

bookbinder Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of ''signatures'', sheets of paper folded together into sections that are bound, along one edge, with a thick needle and strong thread. Cheaper, ...

Johannes Selenka (1801–1871). He studied natural history at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

, and following a graduate dissertation on

Holothuroidea Sea cucumbers are echinoderms from the class Holothuroidea (). They are marine animals with a leathery skin and an elongated body containing a single, branched gonad. Sea cucumbers are found on the sea floor worldwide. The number of holothurian ...

, he remained in

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

as an assistant to

Wilhelm Moritz Keferstein Wilhelm Moritz Keferstein (7 June 1833, Winsen (Luhe) – 25 January 1870) was a German naturalist. He described a number of reptiles and amphibians for the first time. He originally studied hydraulic engineering in Hanover, later becoming a ...

(1833-1870). His research was in this period mainly on the anatomy,

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

and

embryology Embryology (from Greek ἔμβρυον, ''embryon'', "the unborn, embryo"; and -λογία, ''-logia'') is the branch of animal biology that studies the prenatal development of gametes (sex cells), fertilization, and development of embryos ...

marine invertebrates Marine invertebrates are the invertebrates that live in marine habitats. Invertebrate is a blanket term that includes all animals apart from the vertebrate members of the chordate phylum. Invertebrates lack a vertebral column, and some have ev ...

, especially organisms from the phylum

Echinodermata An echinoderm () is any member of the phylum Echinodermata (). The adults are recognisable by their (usually five-point) radial symmetry, and include starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, as well as the s ...

. In 1868 he became a professor of

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...

and comparative anatomy at the

University of Leiden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...

, followed by a professorship at the

University of Erlangen A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

in 1874. In 1895 he was given an honorary professorship at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

. He was co-founder of the journal ''Biologisches Zentralblatt''. His later research was on

mammals Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur o ...

. He studied the early development of the embryo and the development of the germ layer in mammals, and did comparative anatomic research on apes, especially gibbons and

orangutan Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genu ...

s. He found evidence that the lateral distribution of orangutan races was caused by geographic isolation (a process called

allopatric speciation Allopatric speciation () – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from ...

). Selenka also examined the

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

of marsupials and their morphologic relation with reptiles. One problem he was interested in, was the evolutionary relation between Australian and South American marsupials. In order to collect material, Selenka organized expeditions to

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

countries. In 1877 he undertook an expedition to

Brasil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area an ...

. From 1892 he led an expedition that lasted two years to Southeast Asia, it visited Ceylon, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, China and Australia. Among the participants was his second wife, the zoologist and feminist Margarethe Selenka (1860-1922), whom he married in 1893. When Selenka became severely ill during his stay in the Dutch East Indies and had to return to Germany, his wife continued exploring the jungles of

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and ea ...

by herself. The couple wrote a report of their journeys together, titled "''Sonnige Welten- Ostasiatische Reiseskizzen''". Other publications by Emil Selenka are: * ''Beiträge zur Anatomie und Systematik der Holothurien'', (1867). * ''Zoologische Studien'', (1878). * ''Studien über Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere'', (12 volumes, 1883–1913, with Ambrosius Hubrecht). * "Report on the Gephyrea, collected by H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-1876"; (published in English, 1885). * ''Zoologisches Taschenbuch für Studierende zum Gebrauch bei Vorlesungen und praktischen Übungen zusammengestellt'', (1897). Between 1873 and 1874 and again from 1889 Selenka was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Literature

*; 1922
''Emil Selenka, ein Gedenkblatt zur achtzigsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages am 27. Februar''
Naturwissenschaften 10(8), pp 179-181.

References

External links

Zeno.org, translated biography

{{DEFAULTSORT:Selenka, Emil Scientists from Braunschweig People from the Duchy of Brunswick 1842 births 1902 deaths Academic staff of Leiden University Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Academic staff of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg 19th-century German zoologists Members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences