Dominic Louis Serventy (28 March 1904 – 8 August 1988) was an Australian

ornithologist Ornithology, from Ancient Greek ὄρνις (''órnis''), meaning "bird", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is a branch of zoology dedicated to the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related discip ...

. He was president of the

Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union The Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), now part of BirdLife Australia, was Australia's largest non-government, non-profit, bird conservation organisation. It was founded in 1901 to promote the study and conservation of the native b ...

(RAOU) 1947–1949. He assisted with the initial organisation of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

's series of Harold Hall Australian ornithological collecting expeditions during the 1960s, also participating in the third (1965) expedition.

Early life

Serventy was born at Brown Hill, Western Australia to parents of

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

n origin. He was educated at the

University of Western Australia University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Crawley, Western Australia, Crawley, a suburb in the City of Perth local government area. UW ...

and

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

Career

Serventy co-authored (with H. M. Whittell) of ''

Birds of Western Australia This is a list of the Wildness#Degrees of domestication, wild birds found in Western Australia. The list includes introduced species, common vagrancy (biology), vagrants, recently Extinction, extinct species, Local extinction, extirpated species ...

'', (published in five editions between 1948 and 1976), and (with

John Warham John Warham (11 October 1919 – 12 May 2010) was an Australian and New Zealand photographer and ornithologist notable for his research on seabirds, especially petrels. Warham was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, in England, and educated at King E ...

and his brother

Vincent Serventy Vincent Noel Serventy Order of Australia, AM (6 January 1916 – 8 September 2007) was an Australian author, ornithologist and Conservation movement, conservationist. Life and career Born in Armadale, Western Australia, the youngest of eig ...

, a popular

naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

) of ''

The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds ''The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds'' is a book published in 1971 by A.H. & A.W. Reed in Sydney. It was authored by Dominic Serventy, his brother Vincent Serventy, and John Warham. It is in octavo format (252 x 190 mm) and contains 264 ...

'' (1971).

Legacy

Serventy is commemorated by the RAOU's

D.L. Serventy Medal BirdLife Australia is a not-for-profit organisation advocating for native birds and the conservation of their habitats across Australia. BirdLife Australia is the trading name of the company limited by guarantee formed through the merger of tw ...

which is awarded annually for outstanding published work on birds in the Australasian region. Dominic Serventy is commemorated in the

scientific name In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

of a species of Australian lizard, '' Ctenotus serventyi''.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Serventy", p. 241). Dominic and Vincent Serventy are commemorated in the species' epithet of the extinct cormorant ''

Microcarbo serventyorum '' Microcarbo serventyorum'', also referred to as Serventy's cormorant, is an extinct species of small cormorant from the Holocene of Australia. It was described by Gerard Frederick van Tets from subfossil skeletal material (a pelvis with prox ...

'', described by

Gerard Frederick van Tets Gerard Frederick van Tets (19 January 1929 – 14 January 1995), otherwise known as Jerry van Tets, was a twentieth century British, Canadian and Australian ornithologist and palaeontologist. Born to Dutch parents, jhr. Hendrik Barthout van ...

in 1994.

Honours

* 1952 – elected a Fellow of the RAOU * 1956 – awarded the

Australian Natural History Medallion The Australian Natural History Medallion is awarded each year by the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria (FNCV) to the person judged to have made the most meritorious contribution to the understanding of Australian natural history. The idea origin ...

* 1970 – awarded the Tasmanian Royal Society Medal * 1972 – appointed Ridder (Knight) in the Most Excellent

Order of the Golden Ark The Most Excellent Order of the Golden Ark () is a Dutch order of merit established in 1971 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. It is awarded to people for major contributions to nature conservation. Although not awarded by the government o ...

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld (later Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands; 29 June 1911 – 1 December 2004) was Prince of the Netherlands from 6 September 1948 to 30 April 1980 as the husband of Queen Juliana. They had four daughters to ...

Notes

References

* Kloot, Tess. (1986). "A Regular Correspondence … On Matters Ornithological". ''La Trobe Journal'' 38: 42–4

Accessed 10 September 2007 * Robin, Libby. (2001). ''The Flight of the Emu: a hundred years of Australian ornithology 1901-2001''. Carlton, Vic. Melbourne University Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Serventy, Dominic Louis Australian ornithologists 1904 births 1988 deaths 20th-century Australian zoologists