Carlo Pollonera

Texte anglais à traduire :
The list of taxa that have been named after Pollonera documents not only the esteem in which he was held but also the milieu of his scientific contacts as his influence spread.

The first to name a species after Pollonera was his half-brother Mario Lessona, who described the land snail Clausilia pollonerae in 1880[23]. The only locality he listed is one reported by Pollonera. The name is now considered a synonym of Charpentieria dyodon thomasiana[24].

In 1884, the geologist Federico Sacco named a Pliocene freshwater snail Viviparus pollonerae, dedicated to this "kind and talented malacologist" ("al gentile quanto valente malacologo")[25]. Sacco also acknowledged Pollonera's help with his work: the two were contemporaries in Turin. In 1886, Sacco named a species of slug known only from its fossil shell (Miocene) as Limax pollonerae after his colleague who "so lovingly deals with the study of Limacidae" ("con tanto amore si occupa dello studio dei Limacidi")[26]. The same year, Sacco coined the name Polloneria for a subgenus of the land snail genus Clausilia, naming it after "one of the most illustrious Italian malacologists"[27]; Polloneria has since been raised to the rank of genus and given rise to the name of the tribe Polloneriini[28]. In the same article Sacco described Ferussacia Pollonerae. Other colleagues in Turin were responsible for the only two non-molluscan species named after Pollonera. In 1896, Achille Griffini named an orthopteran from Central America Cocconotus Pollonerae (now in the genus Eubliastes)[29]. And in 1912, Lorenzo Camerano named a horsehair worm Chordodes pollonerae[30]; Camerano was originally, like Pollonera, a painter, who had become a protégé of Pollonera's step-father Michele Lessona, eventually taking his place as head of the Turin museum, becoming a senator, and also marrying Pollonera's half sister Luigia[31] - [15].

Meanwhile, Napoleone Pini, based in Milan, had named two species after Pollonera in different 1885 articles printed in the same volume: one was the snail Pupa pollonerae (now Orcula spoliata)[32] and the other the slug Arion pollonerae[33]. In the first case, it was Pollonera who had passed on the specimens of the "new" species to Pini and, in the second, he had drawn the plates illustrating the article. In 1888, another Italian malacologist Giorgio R. Sulliotti, used the name Polloneria for a genus of sea butterfly[34]. As Sacco had used the name already, this new use was invalid and the older name Heliconoides is used today. A year later Sulliotti named a marine bivalve from Sardinia Tapes Pollonerianus in honour of Pollonera "to whom we owe the most recent and best study of the malacological fauna of Piedmont, and with whose friendship I am honored"[35]. Sullioti compared this form with the common Ruditapes decussatus, from which it is not now distinguished.

Pollonera's work and reputation had now begun to spread beyond Italy. In 1889, the German slug specialist Heinrich Simroth named a species of slug from Palermo Agriolimax Pollonerae[36]. This is today considered a synonym of Deroceras panormitanum[37], which Lessona and Pollonera had already described in 1882, also from Palermo[17]. In 1890, another German, Karl Flach, better known as an entomologist, named a variety of Pupa biplicata as "Pollonerae", having discussed Pollonera's recent work on this species[38] - [39]. The Swedish malacologist Carl Westerlund in 1892 named a soil-living snail from Malta Cionella pollonerae[40]; this is today considered a synonym of Cecilioides acicula.

Two expeditions led by Borelli to Paraguay and Argentina yielded mollusc collections that Giuseppe Paravicini (of Milan) and then César Ancey (working in Algeria) wrote up in 1894 and 1897[41] - [42]. Each named a snail species after Pollonera: Helix Pollonerae (now in the genus Epiphragmophora) and Bulimulus Pollonerae. Ancey thanked Pollonera for having directed the collection to him.

In 1897, the cleric and malacologist Pietro Arbanasich (using the pseudonym Fra Piero) authored the description of a species of semi-slug from Sardinia under the name Vitrina Polloneriana[43]. Really, Pollonera himself wrote and illustrated the description[44], and one might suppose that the naming was Arbanasich's way of thanking him. Current names in use for this species are Oligolimax pollonerianus and Sardovitrina polloneriana[45].

In his large 1903 monograph on the Corsican non-marine mollusc fauna, the French soldier-turned-malacologist Eugène Caziot named a variety of Helix raspaili as pollonerae (now Tacheocampylaea acropachia pollonerae)[46], acknowledging the considerable help of the "Italian dissector"[47]. The collaboration was close enough that Pollonera is given as the authority for another new species described in the work.

The leading North American malacologist Henry Pilsbry named two species after Pollonera in his major 1919 work on molluscs from the Belgian Congo, the slug Trichotoxon pollonerae and the snail Gulella polloneriana[48]. The latter was most likely so named because of its resemblance to G. camerani, which had been described by Pollonera. Ptchotrema pollonerae is another species of landsnail from the Belgian Congo, this one named in 1913 by Hugh Preston[49], a shell dealer in London who "realized the market value of new names"[50].

Pollonera was commemorated even after his death. In 1939, Polloneria was used a third time, this time by Alonza and Alonza Bissachi, for a subgenus of unrelated hygromiid snails[51], The next year, to avoid the homonym, they replaced the name with Polloneriella[52] - [53]. Polloneriella is nowadays sometimes considered as a montoypic genus[54] or sometimes considered a subgenus of Xerosecta[55].

Signature: p. 162 of Taylor (1905)[1]. See [10] for other examples.