Yseult Le Danois

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Yseult Le Danois was born on September 8, 1920 and died on September 3, 1985. She was a marine biologist focusing on ichthyology and comparative anatomy. Her work led her to classifying the phylogenies of species and suborders. She clarified the phylogony of frogfish [1] and the suborder Scombers [2] . She discovered many other species including Chirolophius monodi, the family Protobraidae [3] and the genus Proaracana.

Biography

Yseult Le Danois was the daughter of Édouard Le Danois. Édouard was the director of the Scientific and Technical Office of Maritime Fisheries and a collaborator at the Oceanographic Institute. Yseult followed her fathers footsteps by obtaining her master's degree in natural science at the University of Paris [4] . Yseult then thirteen years later in 1958 [5] defended her doctoral thesis at the Scientific and Technical Office of Maritime Fisheries. Her proposal included listing a new suborder of the Orbiculates which is within the order of Plectognates. Her original method of reconsidering phylogenesis came from anatomical adaptation primaraly the synapomorphic evolution of skeleton and musculature structures that provide support for the fish. A contestment to her methods was that within the oder of Plectognates [6] , Cuvier should be the only suborder of the Tetraodontiformes. Yseult's methods were then accepted by fellow ichthyologists in 1974 [7] .

Once Yseult Le Danois obtained her doctorate, she joined the National Center for Scientific Research [4] and was assigned as a research fellow in the Labroratory of General and Applied Ichthyology of the Museum of Natural History. In 1962 she was awarded the Jules Richard scholarship from the Oceanographic Institute of Paris8. She collaborated with Théodore Monod [8] . She followed her father's ideaologies to not conform to the previously established classifications. Yseult took her non-conformist vision to question classifications like the Fowlerichthys ocellatus [9] .

She worked with the municipal museum of Saint-German-en-Laye. While there she was asked by her professor Pierre-Paul Grassé to contribute to the encyclopedia of Traité de zoologie.

In 1972, Yseult was promoted to a research director [4] at the Laboratory of General and Applied Ichthyology. In 1976 she was involved in the founding of the French Ichthyological Society which grew from the 1889 founded Central Aquaculture Society of France. She served as the treasurer of the society [4] . She worked with colleague and friend Béatrice Appia to revive a project that Yseult's father had started [10] . Her great-grandfather on her mother's side Alexis Muston a Vaudois theologian [11] , had begain a transcript for publication. The transcript was picked up by Yseult's father and eventually Yseult and Béatrice.

Yseult was diagnosed with cancer in 1981. While she was batteling the disease she was focused on compleating the transcript for publication. She died six years after her primary diagnosis [4] and was not able to publish the work.

References

  1. ↑ Pietsch, Theodore (March 3, 2020). Frogfishes: Biodiversity, Zoogeography, and Behavioral Ecology (Annotated ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN   1421432528.
  2. ↑ Tyler, JC; Johnson, GD; Nakamura, I; Collette, BB. "Morphology of Luvarus imperialis (Luvaridae), with a Phylogenetic Analysis of the Acanthuroidei (Pisces) [ archive ] ", in Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology". Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology (485): 36.
  3. ↑ Le Danois, É (1963). "The Order of the Scombres. Ichthyological Mixtures". Mémoires. 68: 153–192.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "History of the French Ichthyological Society and of the journal Cybium". Cybium. 31 (2): 101–105. 1985.
  5. ↑ Le Danois, Y (1958). "Osteological , myological and systematic study of fish of the suborder orbiculates". University of Paris.
  6. ↑ Tyler, JC (1963). "A critique of Y. Le Danois' work on the classification of the fishes of the oprder Plectognathi". Copeia: 203–206.
  7. ↑ Matsuura, Keiichi (2015). ""Taxonomy and systematics of tetraodontiform fishes: a review focusing primarily on progress in the period from 1980 to 2014"". Ichthyological Research (1341–8998): 72–113.
  8. ↑ "Description of Chirolophius Monodi, new species of the family Lophidiae (Pediculates Haplopterygii)". Bulletin (6): 1188. 1971.
  9. ↑ Glass, BP (1965). "Mammals of the World. Flights. 1, 2 & 3. Ernest P. Walker". The Quarterly Review of Biology: University of Chicago Press.
  10. ↑ Gaulmier, J (1976). "George Sand and Pastor Alexis Muston". Review of Literary History of France.
  11. ↑ Cabanel, Patrick (2017). "Alexis Muston, historian, poet, diarist". Journal (1825-1850).


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