Biography
Educated at Mill Hill House, Leicester and Oakham School, Donisthorpe went to Heidelberg University to read medicine. However, his "too sensitive nature" forced him to give up this career. Being possessed of a private income, from about 1890 he devoted his life to the study of beetles and ants.
Probably the best known of his collecting grounds were the ancient forests of Windsor Great Park in Berkshire where he had permission to collect extensively and where so many of his important discoveries were made.
During his career he associated with many other prominent British entomologists, including Canon Fowler, with whom he co-authored the last volume of 'Coleoptera of the British Islands, and A.A. Allen.
Donisthorpe was controversial in part because he was often considered overeager in his attempts to describe new species of ants and beetles. For example, he named 24 new species of beetle from Britain (17 named after his colleagues), but 22 have since been deemed to be insufficiently distinct to be considered separate species and have been made synonyms of earlier species. The only two British beetle species that he described which remain valid are the rove beetles:
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- Leptacinus intermedius,
- Ilyobates bennetti.
Species which Donisthorpe described anew that turned out to have been previously classified include (from New Species of Ants (Hym., Formicidae) from the Gold Coast, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea and New Hebrides):
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- Aenictus bidentatus,
- Rhytidoponera gagates,
- Diacamma rugosum,
- Leptogenys walkeri (Donisthorpe noted: "I have much pleasure in naming this ant in honour of my dear friend the late Commander J. J. Walker, RN"),
- Leptogenys violacea,
- Polyrhachis bryanti,
- and Polyrhachis hosei.
Polyrhachis hosei provides an interesting demonstration of Donisthorpe's zeal for new species coming into conflict with existing ones. His description starts: "The general description of P.(M.) byyani would do equally well for this species..." and then goes on to describe a small number of very minor differences: "a larger and more robust insect", "pronotal spines longer", "the scale has a somewhat wider arch", and so on.
Donisthorpe was a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and a Fellow and Vice-Chairman of the Royal Entomological Society. He resided at 58, Kensington Mansions, and was known for his lavish parties, which led to the dissipation of much of his family fortune. He was an associate of Auguste-Henri Forel, with whom he stayed in Switzerland in 1914.
Donisthorpe's extensive and beautifully curated collection of British beetles is housed at the Department of Entomology at the Natural History Museum.
Read more about this topic: Horace Donisthorpe
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