Fernando Lahille
Fernando Lahille being the most ground-breaking. During six years at the museum in Argentina, Lahille created a marine research station on the edge of Mar del Plata and initiated scientific studies of the continental shelf off Argentina. He also participated in two research trips to investigate the natural resources along the Patagonian coastline.
Lahille subsequently became head of the Fish and Game Department within the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture, where he became involved in new fields of biological research. In Argentina, he published over 300 scientific texts in a very broad field. In May 1910 he was appointed professor of zoology at the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires.
Among the areas Lahille worked in are studies on worms in apples and pears, parasitic diseases in agriculture and the fertility of ticks in different life periods, but also largely on invertebrates, such as echinoderms, molluscs, crustaceans, hexapods, arachnids and tunicates. He was also the author of works of a philosophical, technical, anthropological, linguistic and educational nature.
The Argentine stingray Lahille, 1926, the spectacled porpoise Lahille, 1912 and the sea urchin Clavelina nana Lahille, 1890 are examples of species first described by Lahille. The tunicate Didemnum lahillei Hartmeyer, 1909, the knot species Simulium lahillei Paterson & Shannon, 1927 and the dragonhead fish Helicolenus lahillei Norman, 1937 are named in his honour.