Tyson Royal Roberts
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Tyson Royal Roberts is an American
ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 35,800 species of fish had been described as of March 2 ...
. He has been described as "the world's foremost authority on '' Regalecus''". Roberts attended
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, where he earned his B.A. in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1968. His doctoral thesis was titled "Studies on the osteology and
phylogeny A phylogenetic tree or phylogeny is a graphical representation which shows the evolutionary history between a set of species or Taxon, taxa during a specific time.Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, M ...
of characoid fishes." He won a 1999
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
in the field of "Organismic Biology & Ecology", and is a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in
Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...
and is also affiliated to the Institute of Molecular Biosciences of
Mahidol University Mahidol University is an autonomous university, autonomous public university, public research university in Thailand. The university was founded as part of Siriraj Hospital in 1888. It was first called the University of Medical Science in 1943, ...
, Thailand.


Career

Roberts has done extensive fieldwork on tropical freshwater fishes in South America, Africa, Asia, and New Guinea, and has worked in most fish collections in museums and other institutions throughout the world. Fish specimens resulting from this fieldwork are deposited in the California Academy of Sciences, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo, Swedish Museum of Natural History, and many other institutions. He has published several major works on fish faunas, including the Kapuas River of Borneo, Fly River of New Guinea, and rapids of the lower Congo River, and has described numerous new taxa of freshwater fishes from these and other places. His research also has focused on the major adaptive features of Ostariophysan fish groups that have facilitated their adaptations and evolutionary radiations. These include the multicuspid teeth of characoids, unicellular epidermal horny projections (named “unculi” by him) in most groups of ostariophysans, and recurrent trophic polymorphism of the lips, horny jaw sheaths, and other soft mouth structures of the Cyprinidae. His ''Systematics, Biology, and Distribution of the Species of the Oceanic Oarfish Genus Regalecus (Teleostei, Lampridiformes, Regalecidae),'' 2012, is the authoritative publication on the subject. It is unparallelled in its scope, detail, documentation and shrewd scientific reasoning, as well as providing some challenging hypotheses, also in connection with climate change and the Gulf Stream, while at the same time very accessible for the interested reader. In this major study of the fascinating longest bony fish ever (Guinness Book of Records), Dr Roberts has scrutinized all the material available worldwide and throughout history, even taking into account geological evolution over millions of years, a colossal undertaking. Occasional suggestions for further study by scientists. There are many instructive and beautiful illustrations, graphs and tables. (Still available.) Roberts's other scholarly interests include Charles Darwin and his concept of natural selection as products of the Scottish Enlightenment, and identification of royal portrait statues of ancient Khmer ''devaraja'' or divine kings with the reigning monarchs they portray including Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII.


Selected publications

* (with D. J. Stewart). An ecological and systematic survey of fishes in the rapids of the Lower Zaire or Congo River. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. 147(6):239-3 17 (1976). * An ichthyological survey of the Fly River, Papua New Guinea, with descriptions of new species. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 281, vi+72 pp. (1978). * The freshwater fishes of western Borneo (Kalimantan Barat, Indonesia). Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences 14, 210 pp. (1989). * 'Systematics, biology, and distribution of the species of the oceanic Oarfish genus ''Regalecus'' : (Teleostei, Lampridiformes, Regalecidae) (''2012, Paris: Publications Scientifiques du Muséum, )


See also

* :Taxa named by Tyson R. Roberts


References


External links

* ''News item including photograph of Roberts'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Roberts, Tyson R. American ichthyologists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Stanford University alumni