Leonardo Fea (

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

24 July 1852 – Turin 27 April 1903) was an Italian

explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

, and

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 ...

Biography

Fea was born in

, a son of Paolo Fea, who was professor of painting at Accademia Albertina, and Anna Roda. In 1872 he became an assistant at the Museum of Natural History in

Genoa Genoa ( ; ; ) is a city in and the capital of the Italian region of Liguria, and the sixth-largest city in Italy. As of 2025, 563,947 people live within the city's administrative limits. While its metropolitan city has 818,651 inhabitan ...

. He made several foreign trips to collect specimens, including visits to

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

(1885–89) and the

Cape Verde Islands Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country and archipelagic state of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about . These islands ...

(1898), the islands in the

Gulf of Guinea The Gulf of Guinea (French language, French: ''Golfe de Guinée''; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Golfo de Guinea''; Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''Golfo da Guiné'') is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean from Cape Lopez i ...

(

São Tomé São Tomé is the capital and largest city of the Central African island country of São Tomé and Príncipe. Its name is Portuguese for " Saint Thomas". Founded in the 15th century, it is one of Africa's oldest colonial cities. History Álv ...

Príncipe Príncipe (; ) is the smaller, northern major island of the country of São Tomé and Príncipe lying off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. It has an area of (including offshore islets) and a population of 7,324 at the 2012 Cens ...

, Fernando Po,

Annobón Annobón (; ) is a province of Equatorial Guinea. The province consists of the island of Annobón and its associated islets in the Gulf of Guinea. Annobón is the smallest province of Equatorial Guinea in both area and population. According t ...

, 1900–02) and

Cameroon Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...

and

French Congo The French Congo (), also known as Middle Congo (), was a French colony which at one time comprised the present-day area of the Republic of the Congo and parts of Gabon, and the Central African Republic. In 1910, it was made part of the larger ...

(1902). He spent four years in Burma, accumulating large collections of

insects Insects (from Latin ') are hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed ...

and birds. He then planned an expedition to

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

, but his poor health made it necessary to choose somewhere with a drier climate, hence his visit to the Cape Verdes. He was disappointed by the amount of wildlife he found there, but was still able to collect forty-seven species of birds, eleven of which were new for the islands. His collections are in the Genoa museum. While on the

Fea collected a specimen of an unknown

petrel Petrels are tube-nosed seabirds in the phylogenetic order Procellariiformes. Description Petrels are a monophyletic group of marine seabirds, sharing a characteristic of a nostril arrangement that results in the name "tubenoses". Petrels enco ...

. This was named Fea's petrel in 1900 by his friend

Tommaso Salvadori Count Adelardo Tommaso Salvadori Paleotti (30 September 1835 – 9 October 1923) was an Italian zoologist and ornithologist. Biography Salvadori was born in Porto San Giorgio, son of Count Luigi Salvadori and Ethelyn Welby, who was English. His ...

Taxa named in his honour

Several

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

have been named to commemorate his work as

and

: *Fea's short-legged toad, '' Brachytarsophrys feae'' *Fea's viper, '' Azemiops feae'' Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Fea", p. 88). *Fea's muntjac, '' Muntiacus feae'' *Fea's tube-nosed bat, ''Murina feae'' *Fea's tree rat, '' Chiromyscus chiropus'' *Fea's bow-fingered gecko, '' Cyrtodactylus feae'' *Fea's petrel, '' Pterodroma feae'' *Ugly worm lizard, '' Cynisca feae'' *St. Thomas beaked snake, '' Letheobia feae'' *Fea's chameleon, '' Trioceros feae'' *the horseweed species '' Conyza feae'' *the woodlice genus '' Feadillo''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fea, Leonardo 1852 births 1903 deaths Painters from Turin 19th-century Italian explorers Italian ornithologists Italian entomologists 19th-century Italian painters 19th-century Italian male artists Italian male painters 20th-century Italian painters Italian painters of animals Italian naturalists Bird artists Scientists from Turin 20th-century Italian male artists

Biography

Taxa named in his honour

References

Further reading

External links