In Memoriam Jamshid Darvish Christiane Denys, François Bonhomme, Boris Kryštufek, Marjan Mashkour, Jean Denis Vigne, Roohollah Siahsarvie
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In memoriam Jamshid Darvish Christiane Denys, François Bonhomme, Boris Kryštufek, Marjan Mashkour, Jean Denis Vigne, Roohollah Siahsarvie To cite this version: Christiane Denys, François Bonhomme, Boris Kryštufek, Marjan Mashkour, Jean Denis Vigne, et al.. In memoriam Jamshid Darvish. Mammalia, De Gruyter, 2018, 82 (6), pp.521-528. 10.1515/mammalia-2018-0124. hal-02406853 HAL Id: hal-02406853 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02406853 Submitted on 12 Dec 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Mammalia 2018; 82(6): 521–528 Obituary Christiane Denys, François Bonhomme, Boris Kryštufek, Marjan Mashkour, Jean Denis Vigne and Roohollah Siahsarvie In memoriam Jamshid Darvish https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2018-0124 the University of Birjand for nearly 4 years. In 1987, he con- tinued his career as an Assistant Professor in the Biology On November 15, 2017, the community of mammalogists lost Department of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, where one of its prominent figures. Professor Jamshid Darvish, he was promoted to the position of Associate Professor in formerly transliterated as Djamchide Darviche (Figure 1), 1994 and a Full Professor in 1999. In his personal page who was already suffering from thyroid cancer for several (http://www.um.ac.ir/∼darvish/), Jamshid Darvish has years, suddenly passed away in the hospital after severe included three key words concerning his main topics of epistaxis followed by heart failure. We present here some research: Rodents, Biosystematics, Evolution. In these testimonies about his personality, his major achievements, areas, we can find a prolific scientific production, not only as well as his entire bibliography to highlight the important from his own work, but also from his Masters and PhD stu- contributions he made to the field of zoology, paleontology dents. His bibliography lists more than 150 articles pub- and systematics for his country and abroad. lished in the fields of systematics, evolution, paleontology Jamshid Darvish was born on February 10, 1952, in and archeozoology of rodents and other small mammals Birjand (Iran). After graduating from high school, he (see the References section). Among the most cited arti- went to Tabriz in northwest Iran where he studied Natural cles he published, one can find at least three articles Science at Tabriz University. On receiving a national schol- about the evolution of the genus Mus and also a synthesis arship, he moved to France during 1974–1978 where, at the about the diversity of rodents in Iran. His invaluable con- University of Montpellier II, he obtained certificates in tribution to the knowledge of the diversity of his country Ecology and Geology, and obtained a Diplôme d’Etudes is also reflected through the description of a new species Approfondies followed by a PhD in Biosystematics and of three-toed jerboa (Jaculus thaleri Darvish and Hosseinie Evolution, under the guidance of Dr Jacques Michaux. At 2006) named after Louis Thaler from the ISE-M. Jamshid that time, Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution-Montpellier also contributed to the update of the faunal lists of Iran by (ISE-M) was started by Professor Louis Thaler and Jamshid adding new records of poorly known species like Golunda Darvish was one of the first students of this research labo- ellioti Gray, 1837 (Darvish et al. 2012a), the pygmy field ratory to benefit from the beginnings of the evolutionary mouse Apodemus uralensis (Pallas, 1811) (Darvish et al. biology discipline in France that included a multidis- 2010a), the Zarundny’s jird (Meriones zarudnyi Heptner, ciplinary approach. His thesis entitled “Approche mor- 1937) (Darvish et al. 2010b), the Hotson’s five-toed jerboa phologique et morphométrique de la biosystématique à la Allactaga hotsoni Thomas, 1920 (Darvish et al. 2006a) lumière de la génétique des populations. Application aux and the Euphrates jerboa Allactaga euphratica Thomas, genres Mus et Apodemus” allowed him to become familiar 1881 (Darvish et al. 2012b). He made different taxonomic with rodents and different tools in integrative taxonomy revisions using morphology and morphometrics as well from molecules to morphology, both at the species and as phylogenetic analyses like, for instance, revisions of subspecies levels. Moreover, he was in contact with the the whole genus Meriones (Darvish 2009, 2011) or of the ISE-M paleontologists and became interested in this dis- Iranian Apodemus (Darvish et al. 2015). Each of his stu- cipline. One of the main results of his PhD was the first dents has co-authored between three and four papers description of the very faint morphological characters with him, and various molecular phylogenetic and phy- that distinguish two otherwise poorly known sympatric logeographic analyses of Iranian rodents have been pub- mouse species (Darviche et al. 1979, Darviche and Orsini lished under his supervision. Among the latter, one can 1982). His academic career started with the position of quote the study of Microtus phylogeny by Mahmoudi et al. Assistant Professor, 1978–1984, in the Biology Department (2017b,c,d), study of Apodemus (Shad et al. 2016), the of Tabriz University, where he was the head of the depart- analysis of Allactaga evolution as well as phylogeography ment during the last 4 years. Jamshid then returned to his of Meriones persicus (Dianat et al. 2010, 2013, 2016a,b), the hometown (Birjand) and was appointed as the president of phylogeny of Calomyscus by Shahabi et al. (2011, 2013a,b). Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/12/19 11:45 AM 522 C. Denys et al.: In memoriam Jamshid Darvish Figure 1: Jamshid Darvish at the Research Center for Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases (Pasteur Institute Iran), Akanlu, Hamadan, Iran (May 2016). Jamshid Darvish’s interest in morphometric tools was never-ending and led to publications on skull geometric morphometrics in different rodents of Iran, particularly in Mus (Shabani et al. 2014, Siahsarvie et al. 2012), Apodemus (Siahsarvie and Darvish 2008), Microtus (Siahsarvie et al. 2013), Allactaga (Tarahomi et al. 2010) and Calomyscus (Zarei et al. 2013). He also published articles along with herpetologists and ornithologists as well as with entomol- ogists. More recently he was developing collaborations on rodent zoonoses like leptospirosis (Esfandiari et al. 2016), plague and tularemia (Mostafavi et al. 2017) as well as in epidemiology (Esfandiari et al. 2015, 2017). Jamshid Darvish was the first to formally introduce Biosystematics and Evolution as an educationary disci- pline in the universities of Iran. His determination for achieving high standards of international systematic Figure 2: Darvish rodent collection at the Ferdowsi University of research led him to become the founder of the Labora- Mashhad. Cabinets with skulls of Iranian species of jirds (Meriones). tory of Animals Center in Tabriz University, the founder and the director of Birjand station of the International Desert Research Center, the founder and director of Bio- Animal Contemporary Classification to undergraduate systematics Laboratory, Rodentology Research Depart- and postgraduate students. ment, and Institute of Applied Zoology, Rodent Study During his entire scientific career, Jamshid Darvish Group at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Finally, had been involved in extensive fieldwork and collected he took the initiative of establishing the Natural History an impressive amount of specimens which are now avail- Museum of Khorassan which is still under construction able to students and public in the Zoology collection at at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Besides this, the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, recently renamed as Jamshid was the founder, director and the editor-in-chief “Darvish Rodent Collection” in his honor (Figures 2 and 3). of the “Iranian Journal of Animal Biosystematics” (pub- Because Jamshid realized that young scientists in Iran lished quarterly in English) and also the chief editor of need to get access to the literature of Evolutionary Biology, the “Journal of Animal Research” (published quarterly in he translated several books from French or English to Persian). Jamshid gave lectures on Evolution, Taxonomy, Persian among which one should mention the book by Vertebrate Zoology, Mammalogy, as well as on Species Charles Devillers (1973) (Introduction à l’étude systema- and Speciation, Phylogenetic Systematics, Biosystemat- tique des vertébrés. Doin, Paris France), Ernst Mayr (1970) ics, Field and Laboratory Methods in Biosystematics and founding book (Populations, Species and Evolution. Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/12/19 11:45 AM C. Denys et al.: In memoriam Jamshid Darvish 523 and Pierre Boursot intact and stayed there during his sab- batical year in 2004. He also knew Dr. Francis Petter and the Zoology Mammal and Bird department collections of the Museum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN, Paris) very well. He especially revised the gerbilline and dipodid rodents of this collection for which he came for taxonomic revisions and stayed for 3 months in 2001