Robert M. McDowall—taxonomist and biogeographer

Abstract

Robert (Bob) McDowall died in Christchurch, New Zealand on 20 February 2011 after a short illness. Bob was a widely published author and an acknowledged world authority on the taxonomy and biogeography of freshwater fishes. In a preface to Bob’s recent magnum opus on the osteology of the galaxiids and allied genera (McDowall and Burridge 2011), the series editor, Peter Bartsch called him “a complete zoologist” and listed his knowledge and experience ranged from “taxonomy, biogeography and systematics to reproductive biology, behaviour, ecology, evolution, fisheries and conservation biology”. So, how did this talented and productive fisheries scientist come to acquire a profound knowledge of not only the freshwater fish fauna of New Zealand but of the southern hemisphere? Bob was born on 15 September 1939 in Palmerston North in 1939, the second youngest in a family of five. Bob attended Victoria University of Wellington (1958–62), completing an M. Sc. in zoology. As a young scientist, Bob recognised he had available to him a virtually unstudied fish fauna, the native freshwater fishes of New Zealand. The fauna is sparse (~ 40 species) and characterised by a high degree of diadromy. Bob soon realised that this fauna offered an opportunity to “explore pattern and process, cause and effect, evolution and biogeography, in a way that would have been much more difficult in areas with more speciose faunas” (McDowall 2010). One of the earliest papers he wrote on the origins of the New Zealand freshwater fish fauna (McDowall 1964) was probably instrumental in his gaining the opportunity to study at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University USA (1965–68) where he was exposed to the teachings of the likes of Ernst Mayr, P J Darlington, Giles Mead, Alfred Romer and other luminaries of that era. His Ph. D. was on the systematics and phylogeny of the New Zealand galaxiids. The family Galaxiidae comprises a group of southern hemisphere fishes whose wide geographic range and the diversity of habitats they have colonised are somewhat akin to the northern hemisphere salmonids. The galaxiids were destined to become a major research focus for Bob. Upon completion of his doctorate and return to New Zealand, Bob was instructed to commence research on the diet of brown trout, Salmo trutta, something he regarded of much lesser importance than understanding the ecology of native species. With a dogmatism that often characterised his dealings with authority, he ignored this directive and established an extensive field Environ Biol Fish DOI 10.1007/s10641-011-9877-0