Anthony John Whitten (10 April 1953 – 29 November 2017) was a British conservationist,
zoologist, and
herpetologist. He was a senior adviser at
Fauna and Flora International, where he was regional director for Asia Pacific, and was a former biodiversity specialist with the
World Bank. He co-authored several books on the ecology of Southeast Asia and published over 100 field guides in local languages. Born in
Dulwich, London, Whitten attended
Dulwich College and the
University of Southampton. In graduate school he spent two years studying gibbons on the Indonesian island of
Siberut, earning his PhD from
Cambridge in 1980. He and his wife, zoologist Jane E. J. Whitten,
later lived in Indonesia for 10 years. He established a working group on
karst
Karst is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. It has also been documented for more weathering-resistant ro ...
ecosystems for the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and in 2016 was part of a research team that discovered 15 new species of geckos in Myanmar. He died in 2017, aged 64, as the result of a car collision while bicycling.
He is commemorated in the scientific names of at least 13 species, including the geckos ''
Hemiphyllodactylus tonywhitteni
The Phapant dwarf gecko (''Hemiphyllodactylus tonywhitteni'') is a species of gecko. It is endemic to Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in Briti ...
'' and ''
Cnemaspis whittenorum''.
References
External links
Tony Whittenat
Fauna and Flora International (Archived)
Tony Whittenat
World Bank
1953 births
2017 deaths
British conservationists
British zoologists
Alumni of the University of Southampton
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
People from Dulwich
People educated at Dulwich College
Cycling road incident deaths
Road incident deaths in England
{{UK-biologist-stub