Peter Michael Hammond (17 February 1941 – 17 September 2021) was a British entomologist who specialised in

Coleoptera Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

(beetles). For many years he was the head of the Coleoptera section at the

Natural History Museum, London The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum an ...

. After working for a time in China, Hammond was appointed to his job at the NHM in the 1960s by the museum's then-head Coleopterist Jack Balfour-Browne (1907–2002). By the late 1960s Hammond was appearing in newspapers as a Museum spokesperson for the Coleoptera section. Hammond's special interest area was the

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 ...

(rove beetles), but he worked on all families of beetle. Hammond, with Jane Marshall, worked on Fritz van Emden's (1898–1958) specimens in the 1970s and contributed to the Monograph originally instigated by van Emden's research into beetle larvae, published by the

Royal Entomological Society The Royal Entomological Society is devoted to the study of insects. Its aims are to disseminate information about insects and improving communication between entomologists. The society was founded in 1833 as the Entomological Society of London ...

in 2019: ''British Coleoptera Larvae. A guide to the families and major subfamilies'', edited by

Max Barclay Maxwell V L Barclay FRES is a British entomologist, and Curator and Collections Manager of Coleoptera and Hemiptera at the Natural History Museum in London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and a member of the editorial boar ...

and Beulah Garner. From 1981, Hammond served as an editor on the

Entomologist's Monthly Magazine ''Entomologist's Monthly Magazine'' is a British entomological journal, founded by a staff of five editors – T. Blackburn, H. G. Knaggs, M.D., R. McLachlan, F.L.S., E. C. Rye and H. T. Stainton – and first published in 1864.Wale, Matthew ...

, and contributed book reviews. Hammond was known for his talent for surveying areas for beetles, whether researching unpopulated forest areas or suburban spaces, for example using Chinese lanterns and takeaway food containers to entice ''Oxypoda nigrocincta'', ''Clambus apllidulus'' and ''Cossonus linearis'' during a beetle survey undertaken with the

London Wildlife Trust London Wildlife Trust (LWT), founded in 1981, is a local nature conservation charity for Greater London. It is one of 46 members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (known as The Wildlife Trusts), each of which is a local nature conservatio ...

Hounslow Hounslow () is a large suburban district of West London, west-southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hounslow, and is identified in the London Plan as one of the 12 metropolitan centres in Gr ...

in 1998. Because of what was then a museum rule for mandatory retirement at age 60, in 2001 Hammond retired and became a Scientific Associate at the NHM. He continued to travel, collect specimens, research and publish his work. The Carabidae beetle species '' Clinidium hammondi'' R.T. & J.R.Bell, 1985, was named in honour of Hammond.

Selected publications

* Hammond, P.M.: Notes on British Staphylinidae. 1. the status of Olophrum nicholsoni Donisthorpe with notes on the other British species of Olophrum (Coleoptera), ''Entomologist's Monthly Magazine'', volume 106, pages 165–170 (1971) * Hammond, P.M.: Notes on British Staphylinidae. 2. on the British species of Platystethus mannerheim, with one species new to Britain, ''Entomologist's Monthly Magazine'', volume 107, pages 93–111 (1971) * Hammond, P.M. and Bacchus, M.E: Atheta (s. str.) strandiella Brundin (Col., Staphylinidae) new to the British Isles, with notes on other British species of the subgenus. ''Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine,'' volume 107, pages 153–157 (1972) * Hammond, P.M.: Notes on British Staphylinidae. 3. The British species of Sepedophilus Gistel (Conosomus auct.)., ''Entomologist's Monthly Magazine'', volume 108, pages 130–165 (1973) * Hammond, P.M: A review of the genus Anotylus C.G. Thomson (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae), ''Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Entomology'', Volume 33, pages 139–187 (1976) * Hammond, P.M.: Wing-folding Mechanisms of Beetles, with Special Reference to Investigations of Adephagan Phylogeny' in T.L. Erwin, G.E. Ball, and D.R. Whitehead, ''Carabid Beetles: Their Evolution, Natural History, and Classification'', pages 113–180 (1979) * Hammond, P.M.: Staphylinidae (Coleoptera) in Ireland, 1: Micropeplinae, Proteininae, Omaliinae and Piestinae, ''The Irish Naturalists' Journal'', volume 20, number 4, pages 133–140 (1980) * Hammond, P.M.; Kitching, Roger L.; Stork, Nigel E.: The Composition and Richness of the Tree-Crown Coleoptera Assemblage in an Australian Subtropical Forest, ''Ecotropica'', volume 2, pages 99–108 (1996) * Didham, Raphael K.; Hammond, P.M.; Lawton, John H.; Eggleton, Paul and Stork, Nigel E.: Beetle Species Responses to Tropical Forest Fragmentation, E''cological Monographs (Ecological Society of America)'', Volume 68, issue 3 (August 1998) * Caterino, Michael S.; Shull, Verel L.; Hammond, Peter M.; Vogler, Alfried P.: Basal relationships of Coleoptera inferred from 18S rDNA sequences, ''Zoologica Scripta,'' volume 31, issue 1, pages 41–49 (2002)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hammond, Peter Michael 1941 births 2021 deaths British entomologists