René Jeannel (23 March 1879 – 20 February 1965) was a French

entomologist Entomology (from Ancient Greek ἔντομον (''éntomon''), meaning "insect", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study") is the branch of zoology that focuses on insects. Those who study entomology are known as entomologists. In ...

.Jean-Jacques Amigo, « Jeannel (René, Gabriel, Marie) », in Nouveau Dictionnaire de biographies roussillonnaises, vol. 3 Sciences de la Vie et de la Terre, Perpignan, Publications de l'olivier, 2017, 915 p. () He was director of the

Muséum national d'histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Ja ...

from 1945 to 1951. Jeannel's most important work was on the insect fauna of

caves Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance underground (such as rock ...

in the

Pyrenees The Pyrenees are a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. They extend nearly from their union with the Cantabrian Mountains to Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean coast, reaching a maximum elevation of at the peak of Aneto. ...

, France and in the

Carpathians The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe and Southeast Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains ...

, Romania. He also worked in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

. Jeannel specialised in

Leiodidae Leiodidae is a family of beetles with around 3800 described species found worldwide. Members of this family are commonly called round fungus beetles due to the globular shape of many species, although some are more elongated in shape. They are g ...

(then Silphidae or Catopidae) but authored a large number of papers and works on other

Coleoptera Beetles are insects that form the Taxonomic rank, order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Holometabola. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 40 ...

. He was a member of the Romanian Academy. As the son of a medical officer in the French military, Jeannel was expected to succeed his father. However, after developing an interest, during his studies in

Toulouse Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from ...

, in cave exploration and especially cave fauna, he began considering a career in biological science instead. His interest was especially stimulated when he discovered two new cave beetles in the Grotte d’Oxibar (named after him by Abeille de Perrin: '' Bathyscia jeanneli'' and '' Aphaenops jeanneli''.Schilthuizen, M. 2015
Nature's Nether Regions
Penguin In 1905 he began a life-long friendship and collaboration with Romanian biologist Emile Racovitza. In the first 17 years alone they jointly explored 1,400 caves in southern Europe and North Africa and published descriptions of the caves and their fauna. When Racovitza was invited to found a biospeleological institute in Cluj, Jeannel became his deputy director until 1927, when Jeannel obtained a chair in entomology in the Paris museum. Despite his administrative positions, Jeannel remained a productive scientist. In 1911, when he published his 641-page, 657-illustration doctoral thesis on Leptodirini (then called Bathysciinae), he had already produced more than 30 papers. During the rest of his career, he added another 500 scientific publications to this total, together amounting to more than 20,000 published pages—mostly on cave insects and all illustrated by himself. Jeannel's most important contribution to taxonomy was that he realised the potential of using the

genitalia A sex organ, also known as a reproductive organ, is a part of an organism that is involved in sexual reproduction. Sex organs constitute the primary sex characteristics of an organism. Sex organs are responsible for producing and transporting ...

for species identification and classification. Genitalia evolve faster than external parts of the body and therefore the differences between species are greater. In his book ''l'Édéage'' (1955), he summarized all the insights the study of the

aedeagus An aedeagus ( or aedeagi) is a reproductive organ of male arthropods through which they secrete sperm from the testes during copulation (zoology), copulation with a female. It can be thought of as the insect equivalent of a mammal's penis, th ...

(the term used for the male beetle genital apparatus) had afforded him.

Works

* Paris, Libraire A. Schulz (1911). * "The Fauna of the Caves of France") (1940). * "The Origins of Terrestrial Fauna") (1942). * (1911–1912). , 1–6. (1913–1919). * . Mémoires du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (N.S.), 1: 1-435. (1936) * Revue Française d’Entomologie, 8: 101-110. (1942) * Publications du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 16: 1-155. (1955)

References

External links

NDSU biographical and type information

Archive.org
Digital version of Paris, Libraire A. Schulz (1911) {{DEFAULTSORT:Jeannel, Rene French entomologists Presidents of the Société entomologique de France 1879 births 1965 deaths National Museum of Natural History (France) people