Marco Antonio Serna Díaz (11 July 1936 – 31 December 1991) was a Colombian herpetologist, ornithologist, and naturalist.
Life
Serna was born to Marco Antonio Serna and Anna Judith Díaz in
San Vicente Ferrer in
Antioquia, Colombia.
[In Memoriam](_blank)
In: Boletín SAO Sociedad Antioqueña de Ornitología – SAO Volume III, 1992:p 3-8 (Spanish) On 20 June 1950 he entered the
in
San Pedro, Antioquia
San Pedro de los Milagros is a town and municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia. Part of the subregion of Northern Antioquia
Northern Antioquia is a subregion in the Colombian Department of Antioquia. The region is made up of 1 ...
, where he discovered his love for natural sciences. From 1956 to 1958 he studied in San Antonio de Prado. On 10 January 1962 he made his perpetual profession at the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (La Salle Brothers).
He was curator of birds, amphibians, and reptiles at the
Museo de La Salle in
Bogotá
Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city of Colombia, and one of the larges ...
, and professor of ornithology at the
University of Antioquia
The University of Antioquia ( es, Universidad de Antioquia), also called UdeA, is a public, departmental, coeducational, research university located primarily in the city of Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia, with regional campuses in Amalfi, Andes ...
. He curated for the Natural Sciences Museum of the Colegio de San Jose de La Salle en Medellin, where he was based of for many years. His scientific rigor inspired many science careers in the high-schoolers under his influence.
Serna was both president of the Sociedad Antioqueña de Ornitología which he co-founded in 1984, and the Asociación Colombiana de Ornitología, two notable ornithological organisations in Colombia.
Together with
Juan Arturo Rivero, a herpetologist from Puerto Rico, he described several new frog species, including ''Pristimantis dorsopictus'', ''Pristimantis johannesdei'', ''Hyloxalus breviquartus'', ''Pseudopaludicola ceratophryes'', and ''Colostethus ramirezi''.
In 1971, he collected the last known specimen of the
Antioquia brush finch (''Atlapetes blancae'').
In 2012, the newly described
Antioquia wren
The Antioquia wren (''Thryophilus sernai'') is a passerine from the wren family (Troglodytidae). It was discovered in March 2010 in the vicinity of the Cauca River in Antioquia, Colombia and described as a new species by Lara ''et al'' (2012). Th ...
(''Thryophilus sernai'') was named in his honour.
[Lara, C. E., A. M. Cuervo, S. V. Valderrama, D. Calderón-F. & C. D. Cadena. (2012). "A new species of wren (Troglodytidae: Thryophilus) from the dry Cauca River Canyon, northwestern Colombia". The Auk 129 (3): 537–550.] In 1984, Rivero described the frog species ''Eleutherodactylus sernai'' which was later synonymized with ''
Eleutherodactylus cerastes'' (Lynch, 1975).
References
1936 births
1991 deaths
Herpetologists
Colombian ornithologists
20th-century Colombian zoologists
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