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152 and animal parts embedded in paraffin blocks has diverse origins. For example, due to his early investigations of aplacophorans Thiele was provided, starting in the time prior to his curatorial position at the ZMB in 1905, with material by various zoologists, as he reported in case of three newly named species of Solenogastres from Neapel (see Thiele 1894: 222–223), or in case of Anamenia amboinensis. Later, Thiele was also a contributor of scientific descriptions based on material from several of the German imperial expeditions around the turn of the century. In particular, he studied the aplacophorans from two major oceanographic expeditions, viz. the German Deep-Sea Expedition on board of the steamer “Valdivia”, 1898–1899 (with n ¼ 3 new species), and in particular the First German South Polar Expedition, 1901–1903, on board the sailing vessel “Gauss” (with 15 new species described). Thus, these German expeditions were essential in providing new taxa from various regions of the world and taxonomic groups. However, they are largely unknown today for various reasons and, although being of immense historical importance, only few historians of science have dealt with them yet. Here, only brief mention will be made of those expeditions in context crucial for collecting Thiele’s aplacophoran material, with some hints at the most important available accounts. The German “Gazelle” Expedition between 1874 and 1876 on board of the navy corvette S.H.S “Gazelle”, lead by Georg Emil Gustav Freiherr von Schleinitz (1834–1910), was on route around the world with a focus on research in the deep-sea of the Atlantic and Indic Ocean, nearly at the same time as the British “Challenger” expedition. One of the expeditions’ aims was to study the Venus orbit on the near-Antarctic Kerguela Island. As naturalist the Swiss zoologist Theophil Studer (1845–1922) took part in the “Gazelle” expedition, who was instrumental in collecting and later describing most of its natural objects. An original expedition report can be found in Schleinitz & Rottok (1889); see also brief accounts in Studer (1882) and Buchwald (1999). Only one aplacophoran molluscs, Epimenia australis (Thiele 1897) from off the NW coast of Australia, was described and deposited in the ZMB, so we refrain here from a more detailed review of this endeavour. Nevertheless, the “Gazelle” marks the start of German maritime explorations later continued by two other major expeditions of zoological importance. # 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Glaubrecht, M. et al., Aplacophoran Mollusca in the Natural History Museum Berlin The German Deep-Sea Expedition (Deutsche Tiefsee-Expedition), on board of the research steamer “Valdivia”, was on route in the Atlantic and Southern Indic Ocean from July 31, 1898 to May 1, 1899, as the first major German deep-sea research activity subsidized by the German Empire in an nationalistic attempt to keep up with the successful deep-sea expeditions in particular by the British, as e.g. the “Challenger” expedition 1872–1876. Lead by the biologist Carl Chun (1852–1914) from the University of Leipzig, the DTE was most innovative in then modern echo sounding and sampling techniques and achieved important results and collections in nearly all zoological phyla. The material on which specialists from all over Europe worked for the following decades – among them scientists at the ZMB such as Johannes Thiele (recognized, among many other taxa, n ¼ 3 new solenogastres species) – forms today an essential part of the Berlin museum’s type collection. Only one example of the rich material provided by the “Valdivia” expedition is reflected in the cephalopod type collection housed in the ZMB which renders it second only to the respective collection in The Natural History Museum in London (formely British Museum of Natural History); see Glaubrecht & Salcedo-Vargas (2000) with additions in Köhler & Glaubrecht (2004). A most readable – and then very successful – travel narrative was given by Charl Chun (1900); the zoological results were published in 24 volumes, edited until his death by Chun (1902–1914) himself. On the occassion of the 100 th anniversary of the “Valdivia” expedition, short historical reviews were published recently e.g. by Kabisch (1998), Coleman (1999), and more detailed by Landsberg (2000). Unfortunately, however, no comprehensive treatment of this most important expedition and evaluation of its achievements is available yet. The First German South Polar Expedition (Deutsche Südpolar-Expedition) was on route from November 11, 1901 until November 25, 1903, on board the sailing vessel “Gauss”. Lead by the young German polar scientist and professor of geophysics Erich von Drygalski (1865– 1949), it was part of the “heroic” period of polar exploration and, as one of the first truely scientific endeavours, scientifically highly successful. Carried out in the framework of an international programm of geophysical observations, the expedition was nevertheless rated a failure in Germany due to comtemporary political hopes for imperialistic expansion, resulting in a lack of re-
Mitt. Mus. Nat.kd. Berl., Zool. Reihe 81 (2005) 2 / http://museum-zool.wiley-vch.de 153 cognition of its merits for long; for a brief historical account along these lines see Lüdecke (2001) and Lüdecke et al. (2001). At the turn of the century most parts of the South Polar region were completely unknown and following the “Valdivia’s” successful exploration of southern regions south of the Kerguela Islands at 90 E, it was the clear aim and explicit task of the “Gauss” expedition to scientifically explore the South Polar area, in contrast to the geopolitical endeavour of the parallel and competing British expedition lead by Robert Falcon Scott (1868– 1912) on the “Discovery” who was successful in reaching south at 82 17 0 S, while Drygalski only made it to about 66 S. On board of the “Gauss” was, as the only biologist officially employed, the geograph and zoologist Ernst Vanhöffen (1858–1918), who had also been a member of the former German Deep-Sea Expedition on the “Valdivia”. Educated at the University Königsberg, Eastern Prussia, under the influence of Richard Hertwig and Carl Chun, Vanhöffen was lecturer, assistant and honorary professor at the University Kiel from 1890 to 1906, when he became curator for Crustacea, Myriapoda and Coelenterata at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin. He is today mostly remembered for his studies on cnidarian medusae and as member of several exploring expeditions, most prominently the German South Polar Expedition; for a brief biography of Vanhöffen including complete bibliography of his zoological writings see Lohmann (1918). It was Vanhöffen who collected most zoological objects, among them also the many aplacophorans, as is evident from the original labels and documents. Most material was brought back in particular from the so-called “Winterlager”, when the “Gauss” became beset by pack-ice at 66 2 0 S and 89 38 0 E in the Indian sector of the Antarctic, 85 km off the Antarctic shelf, and in a region later to be called “Kaiser Wilhelm II. Land”. It is this the type location were the majority of the ZMB material, i.e. a total of n ¼ 15 new solenogastres species were found (see details in Section A), rendering this expedition most successful in bringing back Antarctic taxa of this interesting molluscan group. The DSE spent the Antarctic winter in 1902 on the sea ice while doing research for 50 weeks. Vanhöffen during this time conducted numerous nettings and dredges in various depths down to the bottom in –385 m. During one of the seven “inland” explorations by dog-sledges Drygalski’s expedition discovered and explored the so-called “Schwarzen Berg” or“Gaussberg” volcano, as it was later entered into the maps. This only area free of ice found by the expedition had an elevation of 366 m above the sea. After breaking free from the ice in early 1903 the expedition failed to find other access further south to the Antarctic and returned in June 1903 to South Africa and home via the Atlantic Ocean. Its scientific collections were studied and analysed during the subsequent three decades, the results being published by Drygalski as editor in a total of 20 volumes and 2 atlantes (Drygalski 1905–1931); see also Drygalski (1904) for an account of his twoyears Antarctic expedition. (Note that it took 85 years to translate into English this semi-popular narrative of the First German South Polar Expedition which partly contributed to its neglectance in the annales of history of science). Another addition to the knowledge of the invertebrate fauna of polar regions came from the German Römer & Schaudinn Expedition to Arctic waters around Spitsbergen Island in 1898 on board the steamer “Helgoland”; for a travel narrative see Römer & Schaudinn (1900). Basically a privat enterprise it, nevertheless, gained many zoological objects of interest. Among them, Thiele (1900, 1913b; see also 1932) described two new aplacophoran species. All this material finally amounted to a total of n ¼ 24 new aplacophoran mollusc taxa newly described by Thiele (including here also his “kergulensis”, albeit re-described only much later by Salvini-Plawen; see under the species); all are now extant in the Malacozoological Collection in the ZMB. Designation of type material Specimens of Thiele’s aplacophoran material were stored in a sea-water/ethanol solution (“Seewasseralkohol” e.g. in Thiele 1894: 222), of which Thiele generally made histological serial sections himself, using a double staining agens (Boraxkarmin and Methylenblau); this is noted as “Thiele fec.” on his original labels and below in Section A; an example of Thiele’s sections is illustrated in Fig. 1. In some taxa several specimens are registered including intact animals as well as histological serial sections mounted on microscopic doubleslides. Since the majority of Solenogastres taxa are well described by their anatomical characters only, we here follow the preferred procedure of treating as holotypes and lectotypes, respectively, # 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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