Published December 1, 2006
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The Evolution And Biogeography Of Henry F. Howden
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- 1. Quarantine Entomology Laboratory, Canadian Food Inspection Agency Bldg. 18, 960 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, CANADA K1A 0C6
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Gill, Bruce D. (2006): The Evolution And Biogeography Of Henry F. Howden. The Coleopterists Bulletin (mo5) 60: 7-18, DOI: 10.1649/0010-065x(2006)60[7:teaboh]2.0.co;2
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- urn:lsid:plazi.org:pub:0541C552FF878929033A8F34EE0AFF9E
Related works
- Has part
- Figure: 10.5281/zenodo.4911988 (DOI)
- Figure: 10.5281/zenodo.4911990 (DOI)
- Figure: 10.5281/zenodo.4911992 (DOI)
- Figure: 10.5281/zenodo.4911994 (DOI)
References
- Much of the insect material that Henry collected in the 1950s was deposited in the Canadian National Collection (CNC) when he was first hired by the Department of Agriculture. During his ten years at Agriculture, he expanded the scarab holdings from 53 to over 500 drawers of pinned specimens. This doesn't include material of other beetle groups, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, and other orders that he collected for colleagues at the CNC. Once he started at Carleton University, he began building the modern H. & A. Howden collection. As this collection grew, he looked towards Agriculture and the CNC as the logical repository for this material, since the university had no interest nor mandate for the preservation of collections. After happily donating material for a number of years, a bureaucratic change at Agriculture resulted in the appointment of a new manager who actively discouraged the acceptance of non-native insects into the CNC, especially from university staff and students. Henry's response was to offer his collection elsewhere, which ultimately led to the creation of an entomology collection within the National Museums of Canada. With donations of specimens and a sizeable cash endowment, the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) became a beneficiary of the Howden generosity and was well on its way to building a world-class beetle collection by the time Agriculture was rid of its myopic managers. Aside from their value in research, access to voucher specimens of exotic, non-native species is one of the best methods for the rapid identification of invasive alien species, and the CNC's loss on the scarab and weevil front has become the CMN's strength.
- Remarks. Over a 55 year span, Henry F. Howden published 179 research papers totaling 3,275 pages (pp. 205-213 herein). That works out to 3.2 publications and nearly 60 printed pages per year. When he started working on Australian geotrupines there were 73 described species. After his 10th publication on the group, he increased that total to 166 species. Of the hundreds of new taxa that he has described, few have been synonymized by subsequent workers. He has helped educate several thousand undergraduate students; supervised 9 M.Sc. and 10 Ph.D. degrees; served as an advisor for 7 additional graduate students; and supervised 20 undergraduate honors students, many of whom went on to careers in teaching and research. He has served as Chairman of Section A, Entomological Society of America (1965) and Vice-President of the CanaColl Foundation (1976- 2000); elected President of the Coleopterists Society twice (1968 and 1969); elected Fellow, Entomological Society of Canada (1985); received a Scholarly Achievement Award from Carleton University (1987) and a Certificate of Merit from the National Museums of Canada (1988); named an Honorary Member, Institute of Ecology, Xalapa Mexico (1998) and an Honorary Member of the Coleopterists Society (2003); and was recently elected Fellow of the Entomological Society of America (2005).
- He's tracked the markets closely, watching the Dow break a thousand in 1972, surpass 4700 on his retirement in 1995, and hit an all-time high of 11,722.98 in January 2000. He's invested wisely in finance, field work, and friendship over the decades, building up vast reserves of capital, Coleoptera, and camaraderie. He's managed to make a career out of doing the things he likes best (collecting, traveling, reading, and teaching), and, in return, has helped many aspiring biologists and entomologists gain the skills that they needed to develop their own careers (even if one of them, moi, did show up unannounced on his driveway one auspicious August 19th). In a nutshell, he's shifted the World towards a deeper and richer appreciation of the Scarabaeoidea. These are the evolutionary signs of a successful man.