Johann Hochhuth and his collection of silken-fungus beetles (Coleoptera: Cryptophagidae): significance and unique specimens

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Institute of Zoology NAS of Ukraine

Johann Hochhuth and his collection of silken-fungus beetles (Coleoptera: Cryptophagidae): significance and unique specimens

K. Ocheretna

Kyiv, Ukraine

Annotation

K. Ocheretna. Johann Hochhuth and his collection of silken-fungus beetles (Coleoptera: Cryptophagidae): significance and unique specimens

Johann Hochhuth was one of the most significant amateur collectors and naturalists of the 19th century in Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe. His collection of Coleoptera has an immense amount of scientific material which is actual even nowadays. Cryptophagidae in Johann Hochhuth's collection is only a small but significant part of collection which can be used as a comparative material for newer gatherings. The author provides some historical facts about the collector and a detailed description of his silken-fungus beetles collection. This collection consists of 214 Cryptophagidae specimens belonging to 50 species of the family. The author also revised all of the specimens, clarified the identification of the species, updated the identification or species names if they weren't revised earlier, and indicated the most unique specimens of the collection.

The collection includes only specimens from the territory of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, and some specimens collected by other collectors, such as Wilhelm Rosengauer (Austria and Germany), Christian Suffrian (Germany), Ernst von Ballion (Russia), Oleksandr Czekanowski (Ukraine) and others. The collection is undoubtedly important for the study of morphological pecularities of some rare species of the Cryptophagidae family compared to recently collected specimens. The accumulation of the information about the silken-fungus beetle fauna of Ukraine will make it possible to generalise the list of species in the studied region. This entomological collection is part of the history of the formation of modern large zoological collections through the difficult path from J.H. Hochhuth's collection, the part of M. Cherkunov's collection, the natural history collections of the Pedagogical Museum of Kyiv to the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, NAS of Ukraine. Its materials are a complete composition of Cryptophagidae species that were collected in the territory of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast in the middle of the 19th century. This article also contains important biographical information on Johann Heinrich Hochhuth's life, education, and scientific achievements.

Until recently, information about the researcher was rather incomplete, including absence of it even in B. Mazurmovychs monograph on the milestones of the historical development of zoology in Ukraine (1972), but in 2015 Johann Hochhuth's great-granddaughter published a book containing great deal of information about the researcher's life and work (Hochhuth, 2015). There is also a small essay on J. Hochhuth in the 2012 review on the history of the study of invertebrates in Volhynia (Ivantsiv, Ivantsiv, 2012).

Johann Heinrich Hochhuth (1810-1872) was a talented botanist who made considerable efforts to create the Botanical Garden in Kyiv at St. Volodymyr University (now Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv), and also an entomologist whose collections of beetles of the Kyiv region are stored in the National Museum of Natural History, NAS of Ukraine (Kyiv). His scientific articles, devoted mainly to separate families of the Coleoptera, are still used by modern scientists (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Johann Heinrich Hochhuth, photo from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Рис. 1. Йоганн Гайнріх Гохгут, фото з інтернет-ресурсу Вікіпедія (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Nowadays we have a slightly different understanding of the term “gardener” of botanical gardens; earlier, it had to be a person with higher education, with knowledge of the basics of agronomy, breeding and a wide range of knowledge in botany in general. Johann Hochhuth was a scientist having exactly those qualities. He was also a gardener of the Botanical Garden and an entomologist who studied and described beetles of the families Staphylinidae and Curculionidae, and wrote articles on general economic topics in Kyiv journals and newspapers, and taught German at the Second Kyiv Gymnasium (Hochhuth, 2015).

Johann Heinrich was born in 1811 in Kassel city on the Fulda River (Land of Hessesen). After graduating from high school in his hometown, he studied in Vienna. It should be noted that he studied first at the Faculty of Medicine, and then (due to dislike of the anatomy classes) transferred to the Faculty of Biology at the University of Vienna and Tartu (then Derpt). His future mentor, Rudolf Trautfetter, also did the same dropping medicine and diving headlong into botanical science. Johann Hochhuth was interested in botany, entomology, and taxidermy all his life. Some old skin-mounts made by Johann Heinrich are still probably stored at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Hochhut, 2015). In 1834, he started to work in Kremenets upon Wilibald Besser's invitation, who was director of the Botanical Garden founded in 1806 at the Kremenets Lyceum.

Two years later, in 1836, after A. L. Andrzejewski's report to the University Council, he requested to provide a job of a gardener and, in conjunction, a taxidermist for Johann Heinrich. Thus, Hochhuth came to Kyiv for the first time, where he was dispatched from Kremenets to St. Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv. In 1839, he moved to Kyiv permanently and lived there for the rest of his life.

In Kyiv, together with Rudolf Trautfetter, Hochhuth developed the Botanical Garden, wrote his finest faunistic works on different groups of beetles, and also kept his collections (Hochhut, 2015).

During his visit to Kyiv, with the permission of the guardian of the Kyiv Educational District, Johann Heinrich brought to St. Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv 132 skin-mounts: 108 hand- stuffed skin-mounts transferred from Hamburg and Vienna, as well as 24 skin-mounts of local species and a bird skeleton.

Johann Heinrich Hochhuth was a member of the Provincial Commission of the Kyiv Educational District (ibid.) and worked in the Botanical Garden of Kyiv University for a long time. In 1850, he was awarded the Gold Medal “For diligent service” (after Nicholas I visited the Botanical Garden in September 1849). During the period of 1849-1873, he published a number of scientific papers, in particular concerning the insect fauna of Ukraine (Hochhuth, 1871, 1872 a-b, 1873).

Entomology was greatly admired by Hochhuth despite his work at the Botanical Garden. He described 60 new species and three new genera of weevils (Hochhuth, 1851 a), and was also interested in the group Staphylinidae (Hochhuth, 1849; 1851 b). He amassed a collection of 485 species of Curculionidae of the Kyiv region (Cherkunov, 1889); three species of this family are named after him: Otiorhynchus hochhuthi Marseul, 1872, Melanobaris hochhuthi Faust, 1882, and Phyllobius hochhuthi Faust, 1883. Together with the entomologist Baron Maximilien de Chaudoir, he prepared several scientific works, including a monograph on the beetles of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia (Chaudoir, Hochhuth, 1846), which remains relevant today, and a later article (Hochhuth, 1847).

Overview of the Coleoptera collection

Johann Heinrich Hochhuth's collection of beetles of the Kyiv region is one of the largest entomological collections (3031 species) described by Mykola Cherkunov (1889). Cherkunov's review contains only a list of beetle names from the collections gathered by J. Hochhuth and Schirmer. Cherkunov's collections, including J. Hochhut's materials, were later transferred to the Pedagogical Museum of Kyiv, and eventually to the National Museum of Natural History, NAS of Ukraine, where they are still preserved as a separate assembly (Zagorodniuk, 2016). Hochhuth's collection of 17 285 specimens is catalogued and listed in a database (O. Martynov, pers. comm.), most of the specimens are stored under the original label names. This collection also contains beetles of the Cryptophagidae family, which are the subject of research by the author of this publication. Therefore, they are given special attention.

There are no details regarding the history of this collection, but it can be assumed that the specimens are stored exactly as they were assembled and defined by J. Hochhuth. Some changes might be made later, but considering the names used, this was before M. Cherkunov's review (1889).

entomological coleoptera cryptophagidae hochhut

The collection of Cryptophagidae species

Hochhuth's collection of Cryptophagidae includes 214 specimens (Fig. 2 a, b) belonging to 50 species of 10 genera (Fig. 3). Other 4 species (7 specimens) also included in the collection belong to two groups currently recognised as separate families of the Cucujoidea superfamily - the family Languriidae with two species of the genus Leucohimatium (L. arundinaceum (Forskal, 1775) and L. langii [Solsky, 1866]) and one species of Macrophagus (M. robustus Motschulsky, 1845) and family Corylophidae with one species of the genus Orthoperus (O. brunnipes (Gyllenhal, 1808)).

Fig. 2. Cryptophagus badius Sturm, 1845: a - the view of the head and pronotum; b - the original label. Photos by O. Martynov

Рис. 2. Cryptophagus badius Sturm, 1845: a - вигляд голови та передньоспинки; b - оригінальна етикетка. Фото О. Мартинова

This collection of Cryptophagidae (Tab. 1) was not described before, although some information about its volume was already published (Ocheretna, 2019 a). The history of this collection originates from the entomological collections of the Pedagogical Museum in Kyiv (Zagorodniuk, 2016), collected by various scientists, including J. Hochhuth (1871) and ordered and described by M. Cherkunov (1889). Schirmer was as amateur as J. Hochhuth. According to M. Bilyashivsky, he was a taxidermist at St. Volodymyr

Imperial University of Kyiv at the times of K. Kessler.

Рис. 3. Загальний вигляд частини ящика зі зразками жуків родини Cryptophagidae, зібраних Й. Г. Гохгутом, у фондах ННПМ (Київ).

Table. 1 / Таблиця 1

The list of species of Cryptophagidae, Languriidae, and Corylophidae families in Hochhuth's collection of beetles / Список видів родин Cryptophagidae, Languriidae, Corylophidae серед колекції твердокрилих Й.Г. Гохгута

References

1. Chaudoir, M. de, J.H. Hochhuth. 1846. Enumйration des carabiques et hydrocanthares: recueillis pendant un voyage au Caucase et dans les provinces transcaucasiennes par le baron M. de Chaudoir et le baron A. de Gotsch; carabiques. Kiew, 1-268.

2. Cherkunov, M. 1889. The list of beetles in Kyiv and it's outskirts. Notes of the Kyiv Society of Naturalists, 10 (1): 147-204.

3. Hamilton-Dyer, S. 2013. The Reference Collection - Is it Dead? The Role of the Physical Reference Collection in the Digital Age. Archaeofauna, 22 (1): 75-82.

4. Hochhuth, J.H. 1847. Enumeration der Rьsselkдfer, welche vom Baron Maximilian v. Chaudoir und vom Baron A. v. Gotsch auf ihren Reisen im Kaukasus und in Transkaukasien im Jahre 1845... Arten. Bull. Soc. Nat. Moscou, 20 (1): 448-587.

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