Pelegrin Franganillo-Balboa
Pelegrín Franganillo Balboa was a Spanish-born Cuban arachnologist and naturalist, as well as a Jesuit priest. He is known for his studies on Iberian spiders and for describing numerous spider taxa.
Biography
In 1889, after completing classical and philosophical studies at the Colegio Máximo of Oña, he joined the Jesuits and was ordained as a priest in 1904. In 1905, he began his academic career as a professor of biology and natural science at the Jesuit college Apóstol Santiago in Camposancos, a civil parish in the municipality of A Guarda, in Galicia. During these years, he developed an interest in arachnology, publishing a study on the species of the genus Argiope found in the delta of the Miño River.In 1909, he was transferred to Asturias to teach at the La Inmaculada college in Gijón, and in 1918 he moved to Havana, Cuba, where he held a chair of natural sciences at the prestigious Colegio de Belén until his death, except for the period between 1946 and 1955 when he taught at the Colegio Dolores in Santiago de Cuba. Shortly before moving to Cuba, he published one of his most important works in arachnology: "Las Arañas, manual de araneología", a comprehensive summary of his studies on Iberian spider species, containing one of the earliest detailed descriptions of ballooning, a dispersal technique used by various spiders.