One sad aspect of each International Polychaete Conference is the collation of obituaries for those friends and colleagues in the polychaete research world who have passed away in the intervening three years. Naturally, most will have retired (sometimes for many years!), though they may still be active in their research and often regular attendees at polychaete conferences. All will be greatly missed.
The authors in the obituary section of these Proceedings wish to pay tribute to the lives, contributions and personalities of 11 researchers who died between 2013 and 2016 (Table 1). All had made their mark and among their number are many major figures in polychaetology over the last 50 years or so, recognized for both their regional and international expertise and influence. Numerically, the losses were most marked in the Americas. South America lost three significant leaders – Edmundo Nornato (aged 93) from Brazil, José Mariá Orensanz (69) from Argentina, Franklin D. Carrasco (71) from Chile – and, tragically, also André Santos (32) a young Brazilian scientist of great potential. North America mourned Mary Petersen (76), Keith Woodwick (93), Judy Fournier (73), and lastly Kristian Fauchald (79) who was universally acknowledged as the most influential polychaete researcher of his generation. The remaining three were Roger Bamber (65) from England, Nechama Ben-Eliahu (79) from Israel, and Minoru Imajima (85) the long-standing leading polychaete researcher in Japan.
Polychaete researchers who have passed away 2013–2016.
*These Proceedings.
Four of the 11 have already been honoured through publication of obituaries or tributes, and their careers are briefly summarized here. Obituaries for the remaining seven are published in these Proceedings and follow this introduction.
Nechama Ben-Eliahu (Figure 1A) was a determined marine scientist famed for her studies of Lessepsian migrations and Serpulidae. She was a stalwart of the first 10 International Polychaete Conferences and well-known to all who attended, establishing many contacts and friendships. Regrettably, cancer deterred her from attending the 11th conference in Sydney, Australia, in 2013. Nechama died on 23 March 2014. Chipman & ten Hove (Reference Chipman and ten Hove2014) wrote an insightful and personal account of Nechama's life from her birth in New York, USA, to her emigration to Israel in 1962 and subsequent establishment as one of the foremost polychaete researchers in the Middle East producing 46 publications.
(A) Nechama Ben-Eliahu, 10th International Polychaete Conference, Lecce, Italy, June 2010; (B) Lobo Orensanz at home in Puerto Madryn, Argentina, January 2010; (C) Roger Bamber, 9th International Polychaete Conference, Portland, Maine, August 2007. Image credits: (A) & (C), Andy Mackie; (B) Vasily Radashevsky.
José María Orensanz (Figure 1B), affectionately known as ‘Lobo’ since his childhood, died from a heart attack on 5 January 2015, as he was packing a van for a family fieldtrip to his beloved Patagonian coast. Lobo was a kind and generous man, and mentor to generations of students. He made a series of significant scientific contributions on the taxonomy of marine or estuarine annelids, as well as in benthic ecology and artisanal fisheries. Diez et al. (Reference Diez, Tablado, Scarabino, Orensanz, Carrera-Parra, Elías and Salazar-Vallejo2015) wrote about his life from his birth in Mar del Plata, Argentina, through his exile in Mexico and the USA, to the return to his home country following the re-establishment of democracy, and his contribution to the study of South American polychaetes. His interest in polychaetes developed through encouragement and tuition from Dr Enrique Rioja. Lobo produced 37 publications on benthic ecology and polychaete systematics, naming nine genera and 29 species.
Roger Bamber (Figure 1C) was a larger than life marine systematist and ecologist. A multi-talented naturalist, he had a great intellect, while at the same time being a ‘man of the people’ and very sociable. Pycnogonids and tanaids were his main passion, but he worked on polychaetes also – describing one new genus (Baldia Garwood & Bamber, Reference Garwood and Bamber1988) and three new species. He attended several International Polychaete Conferences. Roger passed away peacefully in his sleep on 16 February 2015, just over a year after being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). The first obituary was published online (Vandepitte, Reference Vandepitte2015) in the news section of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) as acknowledgement of his involvement with the database since its precursor – the European Register of Marine Species (ERMS). A special issue of Zootaxa was dedicated to honour his life and work (Horton et al., Reference Horton, Blazewicz-Paszkowycz, Staples and Bird2015). An obituary was published also in the Bulletin of the Porcupine Marine Natural History Society (Horton, Reference Horton2015); Roger having been a member since its inaugural meeting in the Royal Scottish Museum (now National Museums Scotland), Edinburgh, on 13 February 1977. He was a prolific contributor, long-standing committee member, Honorary Editor (1985–1994) and more recently Honorary Secretary (2007–2015) of the Society. Roger made an outstanding contribution to the field of marine biology and systematics, publishing 218 scientific papers and describing 346 taxa.
Kristian Fauchald (Figure 2A) was the most highly influential polychaete systematist of his generation. He was kind, generous and inspirational to countless researchers. He authored 103 publications during 1961–2014 (Ward, Reference Ward, Mackie and Darbyshire2016) including the famous ‘Pink Book’ (Fauchald, Reference Fauchald1977) and The Diet of Worms (Fauchald & Jumars, Reference Fauchald and Jumars1979), and two ground-breaking companion works on polychaete systematics (Fauchald & Rouse, Reference Fauchald and Rouse1997; Rouse & Fauchald, Reference Rouse and Fauchald1997). A special publication of papers on polychaete research was published to honour Kristian on his 70th birthday (Rouse et al., Reference Rouse, Gambi and Levin2005). During his career, Kristian described 34 new genera and over 250 of his species’ names remain valid (Read, Reference Read, Mackie and Darbyshire2016).
(A) Kristian Fauchald and Len Hirsch, 10th International Polychaete Conference, Lecce, Italy, June 2010; (B) Front cover of Invertebrate Biology issue featuring contributions from a special session in honour of Kristian Fauchald at the 2016 annual meeting of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology in Portland, Oregon. Image credits: (A) Andy Mackie; (B) Smithsonian Scholarly Press & Invertebrate Biology, Wiley Blackwell.
Kristian was a great advocate of the International Polychaete Conference and attended all 11 held between 1983 and 2013. He served as President of the International Polychaetology Association 1995–1998. In addition, he originated the World Register of Polychaeta which became the core of the World Polychaeta Database incorporated into WoRMS, with Kristian as a founding editor (Read & Fauchald, Reference Read and Fauchald2017).
Kristian died on 4 April 2015 following a heart attack the previous evening. A number of tributes rapidly appeared on the internet and a short obituary was published online on WoRMS (Pleijel & Rouse, Reference Pleijel and Rouse2015). These and many other tributes from family, friends, colleagues and students were included in the tribute volume compiled by Mackie & Darbyshire (Reference Mackie and Darbyshire2016) for the 12th International Polychaete Conference in Cardiff. A eulogy, similarly originally published online in 2015, appeared in print the following year (Salazar-Vallejo, Reference Salazar-Vallejo2016). An annual International Polychaete Day was inaugurated on 1 July 2015 (his birthday) to encourage events and social media activity worldwide, promoting polychaetes in Kristian's memory. A special session of 19 oral and seven posters ‘to celebrate Kristian's legacy as a systematist, taxonomist, teacher and mentor’ was held at the 2016 annual meeting of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology in Portland, Oregon (3–7 January 2016). Eleven papers from this meeting were published subsequently in an issue of Invertebrate Biology (McHugh & Pernet, Reference McHugh and Pernet2016). The cover of this publication featured Kristian's line drawing of Eunice hirschi Fauchald, Reference Fauchald1972 (Figure 2B) – named for his husband Len Hirsch. Len was a regular participant in International Polychaete Conferences (Figure 2A), and sadly died a couple of months after Kristian on 12 June 2015.
