Snelling, Roy R. (1934-2008)

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Roy R. Snelling
Born (1934-09-30)30 September 1934
Turlock, California
Died 21 April 2008(2008-04-21) (aged 73)
on expedition in Kenya
Nationality American
Roy Snelling (1953).jpg

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Roy R. Snelling was an internationally renowned American entomologist who studied Hymenoptera, mainly ants, wasps, and bees. He was the emeritus collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County where he worked for over 30 years, joining the museum in 1963 and retiring in 1993. He dedicated his professional life to making insect biodiversity better known and appreciated.

As a foremost myrmecologist, he is credited with many important finds of rare or new ant species, such as the first Novomessor cockerelli colony in California, Myrmecocystus tenuinodis Snelling 1976 (the honeypot ant), Neivamyrmex wilsoni Snelling & Snelling 2007, and Myrmecocystus wheeleri, named by Snelling after the noted myrmecologist William Morton Wheeler, who was also William Steele Creighton's academic advisor. Snelling wrote that he was much influenced by W. S. Creighton's important 1950 volume The Ants of North America.[1] In his career, Snelling would collaborate many times with Creighton, whose ant collection is now housed at the Los Angeles county museum.

Snelling studied at junior college in Modesto, California, but dropped out to become self-educated. Before going to the Los Angeles County museum, he spent time in the U. S. Army (1959) and as an inspector with the California Department of Agriculture.

Snelling also studied briefly at the University of Kansas but did not complete the graduate program. Perhaps his Cherokee Indian blood that made him such a fine field worker in many countries and regions of the world also made him impatient with the slow ritual of the classroom. Song for a Desert Buff (Roy Snelling).jpg

Primary location of author's collection: Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

PUBLICATIONS

AUTHORS: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z