Travails of a biodiversity scientist =The story of Linnean Medalist Rohan Pethiyagoda

by Ifham Nizam

Dr. Rohan Pethiyagoda was this week awarded the Linnean Medal which is considered as the Nobel Prize for naturalists, at a ceremony in London.

He is the first Sri Lanka to win the annual medal bestowed since 1888 to a botanist or a zoologist, or to one of each, in the same year.

At a ceremony at the headquarters of the Linnean Society at Burlington House, Piccadilly recently, Dr Pethiyagoda was awarded the Linnean Medal for his contributions to science.

“As I heard my citation being read out”, says Pethiyagoda, “It occurred to me that this was the very room in which the papers of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, titled “On the tendency of Species to form Varieties”, were read for the first time on 1 July 1858, ushering in the Age of Evolution on which contemporary biological science is founded. Wallace himself was a recipient of the Linnean Medal, in 1892, followed by Ernst Haeckel two years later.” Other luminaries who have been awarded the Medal include eminent biodiversity scientists of the ilk of Sir David Prain, Sir John Graham Kerr, J.E. Smith, William Donald Hamilton, Sir Ghillean Prance, Stephen Jay Gould, John Maynard Smith, David Mabberley, Georgina Mace and Kamaljit Bawa. In short, its recipients read rather like a Biodiversity Hall of Fame.

Dr. Pethiyagoda is an author, educator and taxonomist and once served as deputy chair of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission. He is also a Rolex laureate.”His impact on biodiversity research in Sri Lanka and beyond through his output and catalytic influence cannot be overestimated,” the award committee wrote, and the author of this commentary explains why this is so.

Amongst his copious outputs, Pethiyagoda has contributed greatly in highlighting the very history of biodiversity in Asia, linking together scientists, artists, travelers, and explorers in both East and West. One of his first books was a comprehensive colour guide to the freshwater fish of Sri Lanka – a best seller.

In November 2020, in a paper published in the journal Zootaxa, an international team of scientists named a new genus of diminutive Asian treefrogs in honour of Sri Lankan scientist Rohan Pethiyagoda.

The genus ‘Rohanixalus’ includes eight species, which range through Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, northeast India, and southern China.

Led by Prof. S.D. Biju and Dr. Sonali Garg of the University of Delhi, the team includes leading scientists also from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences and Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.