Leonardo Fea (24 July 1852 – 27 April 1903) was an Italian explorer, zoologist, painter, and naturalist.
Biography Fea was born in Turin, a son of Paolo Fea, who was professor of painting at Accademia Albertina, and Anna Roda. In 1872 he became an assistant at the Museum of Natural History in Genoa. He made several foreign trips to collect specimens, including visits to Burma (1885–89) and the Cape Verde Islands (1898), the islands in the Gulf of Guinea (São Tomé, Príncipe, Fernando Po, Annobón, 1900–02) and Cameroon and French Congo (1902). He spent four years in Burma, accumulating large collections of insects and birds. He then planned an expedition to Malaysia, but his poor health made it necessary to choose somewhere with a drier climate, hence his visit to the Cape Verdes. He was disappointed by the amount of wildlife he found there, but was still able to collect forty-seven species of birds, eleven of which were new for the islands. His collections are in the Genoa museum.
While on the Cape Verde Islands Fea collected a specimen of an unknown petrel. This was named Fea's petrel in 1900 by his friend Tommaso Salvadori.
Taxa named in his honour Several species have been named to commemorate his work as naturalist and zoologist:
Fea's short-legged toad, Brachytarsophrys feae Fea's viper, Azemiops feae Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Fea", p. 88). Fea's muntjac, Muntiacus feae Fea's tube-nosed bat, Murina feae Fea's tree rat, Chiromyscus chiropus Fea's bow-fingered gecko, Cyrtodactylus feae Fea's petrel, Pterodroma feae Ugly worm lizard, Cynisca feae St. Thomas beaked snake, Letheobia feae Fea's chameleon, Trioceros feae the horseweed species Conyza feae the woodlice genus Feadillo
References
Further reading
Conci C (1975). "Repertorio delle biografie e bibliografie degli scrittori e cultori italiani di entomologia ". Mem. Soc. Ent. Ital 48 (4): 817–1069. (in Italian). Conci C, Poggi R (1996). "Iconography of Italian Entomologists, with essential biographical data". Mem. Soc. Ent. Ital 75: 159–382. Gestro A (1904). ["Fea, L."] Annali del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Genova, Third Series 1 (= 41): 95-152. (Portrait). (in Italian). Nalesini O (2009). L'Asia Sud-orientale nella cultura italiana. Bibliografia analitica ragionata, 1475-2005. Rome: Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente. pp. 19–20, 65–66. . (in Italian).
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