Mikael Heggelund Foslie Systematical survey of the Lithothamnia

Abstract

M.H. Foslie produced about 70 publications on coralline red algae from 1887 until his death in 1909. He described far more taxa within this group than any other author. In the paper from 1898 he proposed a generic classification scheme for the non-geniculate corallines. At this time he was regarded as the world expert on these algae, and he received many collections from foreign institutions, colleagues and scientific expeditions. He aimed at producing a world monograph of the coralline red algae. His sudden death in 1909, at the age of 54 years, set a sad stop for the completion of this work. He published however two monographic accounts of Northern Lithothamnia in 1895 and 1905, and his contributions to a world monograph was prepared and published by Henrik Printz twenty years after Foslie’s death. The professional career of Mikael Foslie was unusual in that he started off as an amateur with a keen interest in natural history. In 1885 Foslie was offered a scientific position as curator at the Museum in Tromsø, and in 1892 he moved to Trondheim where he became curator at the Museum of the Royal Norwegian Society for Science and Letters where he remained until his death. The taxonomic concepts used by Foslie, especially at species level, differed from present day usage and he was known for frequent changes of mind with respect to species delineation. Foslie’s coralline herbarium is housed at the Museum in Trondheim and contains hundreds of type collections and voucher material from worldwide collections. Because of the meticulous and scholarly revisions carried out by Professor Bill Woelkerling and others, culminating in a more than 600 pages revised catalogue with analyses in 2005, Foslie’s herbarium and publications will continue to be an international scientific treasure.