Alfred Malherbe
Alfred Malherbe was a French magistrate and amateur naturalist born in Mauritius to Pierre Marie François Malherbe and Rosalie Le Meusnier Molineuf. The family originally came from Metz. Alfred became the administrator of the Museum of Metz.
He devoted his spare time to botany and zoology. He conducted studies of birds of Algeria and Sicily.
Malherbe was the author of , the first global survey of the woodpeckers. He described and named Levaillant's woodpecker, after French ornithologist François Le Vaillant. In addition to Monographie des picidées, he was the author of several other ornithological works:
- Faune ornithologique de la Sicile : avec des observations sur l'habitat ou l'apparition des oiseaux de cette île, etc. - Ornithological fauna of Sicily.
- Description de dix espéces nouvelles du genre Picus, Linné., - Description of ten new species from the genus Picus.
- Faune ornithologique de l'Algérie - Ornithological fauna of Algeria.