Ronald Vernon Southcott

Ronald Vernon Southcott, (15 May 1918 in Adelaide - 9 April 1998), was an Australian medical zoologist specializing in acari.

Biography

After finishing school at St Peter's College, Adelaide he started working on acari at the age of 16 with Herbert Womersley the acarologist at the South Australian Museum. Womersley described and named the trombidiid mite Microtrombidium southcotti, which Southcott had collected on a cycling trip in the hills near Adelaide in 1934.[1] He studied medicine at the University of Adelaide where he graduated in 1941. Southcott then served in the Australian Army Medical Corps from 1942 to 1946.[1] While he was stationed at Cairns he started working on the taxonomy and medical effects of jellyfish, the subject for which he was later to become famous.[1] His more than 70 papers on acari include a complete revision of the subfamilies and genera of erythraeidae in 1961. Throughout his life he was interested in the medical effects of plants and animals. He published papers on medical entomology and zoology that are classics in their field, illustrated with his own photographs. His work also includes descriptions of the highly venomous box jellyfish Chironex fleckeri.[2] He also contributed on the medical effects of high liver consumption of Arctic explorers, leading to hypervitaminosis A.[3]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 R.B. Halliday & J.H. Pearn (1999). "Ronald Vernon Southcott Acarologist, Physician, Naturalist" (PDF). International Journal of Acarology 25 (2): 151–153. doi:10.1080/01647959908683627. Retrieved September 9, 2013.
  2. ↑ R.V. Southcott (1956). "Studies on Australian Cubomedusae, Including a New Genus and Species Apparently Harmful to Man". Australian Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 7 (2): 254–280. doi:10.1071/MF9560254.
  3. ↑ J. Cleland und R. V. Southcott: Hypervitaminosis A in the Antarctic in the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914: a possible explanation of the illness of Mertz and Mawson. In: Med. J. Aust. 1, 1969, S. 1337–1342