Leonardo Fea


Leonardo Fea was an Italian explorer, zoologist, painter, and naturalist.

Biography

Fea was born in Turin, a son of Paolo Fea, who was professor of painting at Accademia Albertina, and Anna Roda. In 1872 he became an assistant at the Museum of Natural History in Genoa. He made several foreign trips to collect specimens, including visits to Burma and the Cape Verde Islands, the islands in the Gulf of Guinea and Cameroon and French Congo. He spent four years in Burma, accumulating large collections of insects and birds. He then planned an expedition to Malaysia, but his poor health made it necessary to choose somewhere with a drier climate, hence his visit to the Cape Verdes. He was disappointed by the amount of wildlife he found there, but was still able to collect forty-seven species of birds, eleven of which were new for the islands. His collections are in the Genoa museum.
While on the Cape Verde Islands Fea collected a specimen of an unknown petrel. This was named Fea's petrel in 1900 by his friend Tommaso Salvadori.

Taxa named in his honour

Several species have been named to commemorate his work as naturalist and zoologist: