Dominic Serventy | |
Birth Name: | Dominic Louis Serventy |
Birth Place: | Brown Hill, Western Australia |
Birth Date: | 28 March 1904 |
Death Date: | 8 August 1988 (aged 84) |
Occupation: | Ornithologist, author |
Office: | President of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union |
Term Start: | 1947 |
Term End: | 1949 |
Dominic Louis Serventy (28 March 1904 – 8 August 1988) was a Perth-based Western Australian ornithologist. He was president of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) 1947–1949. He assisted with the initial organisation of the British Museum's series of Harold Hall Australian ornithological collecting expeditions during the 1960s, also participating in the third (1965) expedition.
He was born at Brown Hill, Western Australia to parents of Croatian origin. He was educated at the University of Western Australia and Cambridge University.
He co-authored (with H. M. Whittell) of Birds of Western Australia, (published in five editions between 1948 and 1976), and (with John Warham and his brother Vincent Serventy, a popular naturalist) of The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds (1971).
He is commemorated by the RAOU's D.L. Serventy Medal which is awarded annually for outstanding published work on birds in the Australasian region.[1]
Dominic Serventy is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of Australian lizard, Ctenotus serventyi.[2] Dominic and Vincent Serventy are commemorated in the species' epithet of the extinct cormorant Microcarbo serventyorum, described by Gerard Frederick van Tets in 1994.