VOLUME 53 ME M OIRS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEU M BRIS B ANE 30 NOVE mb ER 2007 © Queensland Museum PO Box 3300, South Brisbane 4101, Australia Phone 06 7 3840 7555 Fax 06 7 3846 1226 Email [email protected] Website www.qm.qld.gov.au National Library of Australia card number ISSN 0079-8835 Volume 53 is complete in one part. NOTE Papers published in this volume and in all previous volumes of the Memoirs of the Queensland Museum may be reproduced for scientific research, individual study or other educational purposes. Properly acknowledged quotations may be made but queries regarding the republication of any papers should be addressed to the Editor in Chief. Copies of the journal can be purchased from the Queensland Museum Shop. A Guide to Authors is displayed at the Queensland Museum web site www.qm.qld.gov.au/organisation/publications/memoirs/guidetoauthors.pdf A Queensland Government Project Typeset at the Queensland Museum PARASITOLOGY AND THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM WITH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON COLLECTORS B.M. ANGUS, L.R.G. CANNON AND R.D. ADLARD Angus, B.M., Cannon, L.R.G. & Adlard, R.D. 2007 11 30: Parasitology and the Queensland Museum, with biographical notes on collectors. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 53(1) 1-156. Brisbane. ISSN 0079-8835. Queensland and the Queensland Museum have a long association with parasitology beginning with one of the early members of the Board of Directors, Dr Joseph Bancroft, who gave his name to the worm which causes elephantiasis, Wuchereria bancrofti. Collections of parasites made during the 19th and 20th centuries, that are now housed at the Queensland Museum, are discussed. Such collections are not uniquely Australian, but include a considerable number of specimens collected in other parts of the world. That the Queensland Museum has become their repository is a testimony to the importance placed on the field of parasitology in Queensland during the past 120 years by medical, veterinary and biological scientists. Their investigations have gained them international recognition for the excellence of their research into the knowledge of a wide range of parasitic organisms. The relevance and context of the Queensland Museum as a repository of whole parasite specimens is discussed. Historical background on the collections and their collectors is provided, and on the influences and motivations of the researchers and the times in which their collections were made. Today the Queensland Museum’s parasite collections are amongst the most significant in the world. The growth of the parasitology collections at the Queensland Museum over the last 25 years, and especially during the 1990s is detailed. In December 1995 the collection of the International Reference Centre for Avian Haematozoa (IRCAH), a United Nations sponsored collection of blood parasites of birds, was placed under the Queensland Museum’s stewardship. parasitology, history, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century, Queensland, biography, collections B.M. Angus, 96 Mallawa Dr, Palm Beach, Qld 4221, Australia (Email: [email protected]. au); L.R.G. Cannon, 50 Gordon Tce, Indooroopilly, Qld 4077 (Email: jcannon@bigpond. net.au); R.D. Adlard, Queensland Museum, PO Box 3300, South Brisbane, Qld 4101 (Email: [email protected]); 26 August 2006. This monograph is an historical commentary on the growth and study of parasitology in Queensland, the stories of the parasitologists themselves, and how and why they acquired the collections that now form the core of the Queensland Museum parasite holdings. List of species, museum acce ssion numbers, and details of the coverage and magnitude of these collections, are available from the Queensland Museum upon request. In biology the predictability and therefore the stability of science is vested in the authority of the names provided to organisms. The names are attached to specimens in museums and thus the work of collection, research on, and long term care (curation) of specimens in museums forms a pillar underpinning all of biology. CONTENTS T. Harvey Johnston. .7 Early entomology in Queensland — Alexandre A. Girault: PART A: THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARASITOLOGY IN Parasitic wasps. 8 QUEENSLAND. .2 The advent of a new era in Queensland State Health EARLY PARASITOLOGY IN QUEENSLAND: 1876 TO Research. .9 1940s. .2 The Queensland Institute of Medical Research. .10 The Bancrofts . .3 Ian & Josephine Mackerras. 10 The Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine Townsville, M. Josephine Mackerras. 11 Queensland: 1909–1930 . 4 F.H.S. Roberts. 11 Anton Breinl. 5 PARASITOLOGY IN THE ASCENDANT IN Tropical diseases in Australia in the early 20th Century 5 QUEENSLAND — 1930s to 1986. 13 The rise and fall of The Australian Institute of Tropical A veterinary school for Queensland. 13 Medicine . 6 The early beginnings of CSIRO in Queensland. 14 J.H.L. Cumpston. .6 The Ontario Research Foundation, and the Toronto 2 MEMOIRS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM School of Parasitology. .15 THE NEW MILLENIUM. 57 A. Murray Fallis . 16 A new beginning?. .57 John F.A. Sprent . 16 Parasitology in Queensland — Quo Vadit ?. 58 John C. Pearson. .17 PART B: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON COLLECTORS Gordon F. Bennett. .18 AND THOSE OF INFLUENCE. 58 Roy C. Anderson. 19 Robert Douglas Adlard (1955–). .58 David M. Spratt . 20 Reino (‘Ray’) S. Freeman. .21 Gordon Fraser Bennett (1930–1995) . 61 Lester R.G. Cannon. 22 David Blair (1949–) . 63 Marine parasitology comes to the University of Anton Breinl (1880–1944). .64 Queensland. 23 Malcolm Stewart Bryant (1958–). 66 R.J.G. Lester. .25 Niel L. Bruce. .26 Lester Robert Glen Cannon (1940–). 66 A Symbiotic Web: Ontario and Queensland. .27 Robert C. Colbran (1926–). .69 The Sixth International Congress of Parasitology (ICOPA Thomas Herbert Cribb (1960–). 70 VI) in Brisbane, 25–29 August 1986. 30 Robert Domrow (1931–). .71 THE GATHERING OF THREADS — THE ACQUISITION OF PARASITOLOGY COLLECTIONS AT THE Albert Murray Fallis (1907–2003). 71 QUEENSLAND MUSEUM 1986–1999. .31 Alexandre Arsene Girault (1884–1941). 73 Donated collections. .31 Robert John Graham Lester (1941–). 75 The J.F.A. Sprent Collection. .31 Mabel Josephine Mackerras (1896–1971). 76 The School of Tropical Medicine & Public Health (STMPH) Collection. .34 John Cawardine Pearson (1927–)(Autobiographical Note) 79 R.C. Colbran Collection. 35 Michael Alan Peirce (1942–) . .83 J.C. Pearson Collection. .36 Frederick Hugh Sherston Roberts (1901–1972). .87 The International Reference Centre for Avian Klaus Rohde (1932–) . .88 Haematozoa (IRCAH). .37 Kim Bradley Sewell (1957–) . .89 Other important parasite collections. 37 P.C. Young Collection. 37 David Michael Spratt (1942–) . 90 T.H. Cribb Collection. 37 John Frederick Adrian Sprent (1915–). 91 Pivotal Collections. .39 Ian David Whittington (1960- ) . .99 Transversotrematidae. .39 Peter Colin Young (1940–). 100 K. Rohde Collection. .40 D. Blair Collection . 41 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. .102 I.D. Whittington Collection. 43 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND LITERATURE R. Domrow Collection . .43 CITED . 102 A Database For The Australian Parasitology Collections 45 APPENDIX. 149 The Australian Parasitology Collections Database — A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE ASPIC . .47 MALARIA PARASITE AND THE NATURE OF ITS The International Reference Centre for Avian Haematozoa TRANSMISSION. .149 (IRCAH) . .48 Plasmodium species in humans . 150 In the beginning — IRCAMP. 49 The work of Dr H. Elliott McClure (1910–1998). .50 The search to understand transmission. .150 IRCAMP becomes IRCAH. 52 Avian malaria vector research. 151 The contribution of M.A. Peirce. 53 Human malaria transmission via mosquitoes is proved IRCAH moves to Queensland Museum. 54 . 151 Robert Adlard’s Custodianship. 55 ENDNOTES. .152 PART A: THE DEVELOPMENT OF greater number of veterinary parasites, many of PARASITOLOGY IN QUEENSLAND which are vector-borne. As a result Queensland investigators have for more than 100 years earned EARLY PARASITOLOGY IN international recognition for their research in QUEENSLAND: 1876 TO 1940S entomology as well as in parasitology. Queensland can justifiably be cited as the ‘seat’ Although the Queensland Museum was of parasitology in Australia. With much of the State established nearly 150 years ago, very few lying within the dry tropics, Queensland has played parasite specimens were lodged in the Museum ‘host’ to a number of medical parasites and an even Collections until the early part of the 20th century, PARASITOLOGY AND THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM 3 despite a strong research interest in parasitology in It was Joseph Bancroft in Brisbane who in Queensland. 1876, found four living adult female filarial worms in the hydrocoele of a patient. On sending THE BANCROFTS these preserved specimens to Thomas Cobbold in London who had previously identified Manson’s The most illustrious of Queensland’s pioneers specimens of the immature forms of the parasite, in medical research is Joseph Bancroft, a Bancroft’s worms were pronounced by Cobbold practising physician who came to Brisbane in to be the mature, adult form (Boreham & Marks, 1864 from Manchester, England (QIMR Annual 1986; Mackerras & Marks, 1973). Subsequently, Report, 1991). One of the former Trustees of the Thomas Lane Bancroft (Fig. 2), son of Joseph Queensland Museum, Joseph Bancroft (Fig. 1) is Bancroft and himself a physician and fine ‘immortalised’ by the fact that the specific name naturalist, demonstrated that transmission of the causative organism of human filariasis of the pre-larval form of the filarioid, the (‘elephantiasis’) was named in his honour, microfilaria, was