JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN
MOSQUITO CONTROL ASSOCIATION
Mosquito News
MEMORIAL LECTURE
2011 AMCA MEMORIAL LECTURE HONOREE:
DR. HARRISON GRAY DYAR JR.
TERRY L. CARPENTER1
AND
TERRY A. KLEIN2
Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, 27(3):336–343, 2011
Copyright E 2011 by The American Mosquito Control Association, Inc.
MEMORIAL LECTURE
2011 AMCA MEMORIAL LECTURE HONOREE:
DR. HARRISON GRAY DYAR JR.
TERRY L. CARPENTER1
AND
TERRY A. KLEIN2
ABSTRACT. Dr. Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. (1866–1929) was an early-20th-century expert in taxonomy
and biology of culicid Diptera. At an early age, Dyar became interested in the biology, life history, and
taxonomy of Lepidoptera, which he continued throughout his entire career. Dyar pursued his passion for
entomology, and during his formative years, professionals sent Lepidoptera specimens to him for
identification. As his prominence was well known to Leland Howard, then the honorary curator of the US
National Museum of Natural History, he was asked and accepted the position as honorary custodian of
Lepidoptera in 1897, which later included periods of service with the US Department of Agriculture
Bureau of Entomology and the US Army Officers’ Reserve Corps. This position went without stipend and
it was Dyar’s personal wealth that allowed him to continue his love of entomology. However, the museum
did provide limited staff and funds for illustrators, supplies, and travel. In the early 1900s, his interests
expanded to include mosquitoes where he concentrated on their life histories and taxonomy. Throughout
his career, Dyar often criticized colleagues, both personally and in publications, often with interludes of
peace to coauthor articles and books. His legacy of original scientific work is of lasting significance to
public health and entomology communities, in recognition of which he was selected as the 2011 AMCA
memorial lecture honoree.
KEY WORDS
Dyar, Lepidoptera, Diptera, Culicidae, mosquitoes, memorial
INTRODUCTION
Dr. Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. (1866–1929) was a
world-renowned expert in the biology and taxonomy of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies),
Symphyta (sawflies), and nematocerous Diptera,
including the mosquitoes (Knight and Pugh 1974,
Epstein and Henson 1992). His interest in
Lepidoptera is relevant to our memorializing
him today because it was that interest which
started him on his life’s work as an entomologist.
His groundbreaking research in the early decades
of the 20th century logarithmically increased
knowledge about mosquitoes, shaped our understanding of their importance to man and the
environment, and established a firm foundation
for mosquito control professionals in the 21st
century—see Fig. 1.
EARLY LIFE
Dyar was born February 14, 1866, in the
borough of Manhattan, New York City, the elder
of 2 children born to Harrison Gray and
Eleanora (Hannum) Dyar, both descendants of
old New England families (Dyar 1903, White
1910). Dyar Sr. was an inventor of note, who, by
1
Armed Forces Pest Management Board, Fort
Detrick, Forest Glen Annex, c/o 6900 Georgia Avenue
NW, Washington, DC 20307-5001.
2
Force Health Protection and Preventive Medicine,
65th Medical Brigade/US Army MEDDAC-Korea,
Unit 15281, APO AP 96205-5281.
his son’s account, invented the magnetic telegraph independently of Samuel B. Morse but was
unable to develop his invention commercially and
abandoned the effort to concentrate on interests
in chemistry. He earned a substantial fortune
from patents for dyestuffs before his death at the
age of 70 in 1875, just 10 years after marrying,
and left his family in comfortable circumstances.
The family fortune would be a significant factor
in his son’s professional life.
Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. received his early
education at the Roxbury Latin School in
Boston, MA (Epstein and Henson 1992). Evidence in the records of Rhinebeck, NY, where his
father had purchased a family home, indicates
that Dyar also attended the DeGarmo Institute, a
private high school in Rhinebeck (Kelly 2009). He
graduated from Roxbury at the age of 19 in 1885
(White 1910) with advanced standings in mathematics, physics, and French, but interestingly,
considering how well he was to apply it in
adulthood, lesser success in Latin (Epstein and
Henson 1992).
As a youth, Dyar was fascinated by butterflies
and moths, and in 1882 at the age of 16 (Epstein
and Henson 1992) he began keeping detailed
rearing and fieldwork records in notebooks,
which are now preserved among his papers at
the Smithsonian Institution (Lytle 2003). He was
most fond of limacodid moths, the larvae of
which are known as slug caterpillars, and this
interest continued throughout his life (Epstein
and Henson 1992).
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2011 MEMORIAL LECTURE HONOREE
Fig. 1. Dr. Harrison G. Dyar Jr., ca. 1917
(Smithsonian Institution Archives, image no. SIA20090002).
ACADEMIC PREPARATION
After completing secondary school, Dyar
entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied chemistry, graduating in 1889 with
a bachelor of science degree (White 1910). He
published his first entomological paper in 1888
(Dyar 1888), a short but characteristically detailed study of the immature stages of the moth
Dryopteris rosea (Walker, 1855).
In 1892 Dyar entered graduate school at
Columbia College (now Columbia University)
and earned a master’s degree in biology in 1894,
with a thesis on the classification of lepidopterous
larvae (White 1910). He stayed on at Columbia to
earn a Ph.D. in 1895, majoring in bacteriology
and writing a thesis on airborne bacteria (White
1910), but minoring in entomology (Epstein and
Henson 1992). After graduation, he took a
position as Assistant Bacteriologist at the Columbia University College of Physicians and
Surgeons (White 1910).
PROFESSIONAL CAREER
While teaching at Columbia from 1895 to 1897,
Dyar continued his entomological pursuits, further developing his expertise in the biology and
taxonomy of Lepidoptera and Symphyta (Smith
1986, Epstein and Henson 1992). In 1897, Dr.
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Leland O. Howard, chief of the US Department
of Agriculture (USDA) Bureau of Entomology
and honorary curator of the US National
Museum (USNM), invited Dyar to take the
position of honorary custodian of Lepidoptera
at the USNM. The position didn’t offer direct
compensation (Epstein and Henson 1992), but
Dyar accepted, resigned his faculty appointment
at Columbia, and moved to Washington, DC,
supporting himself with his inherited personal
fortune (White 1910, Howard 1930, Epstein and
Henson 1992). He purchased 2 adjoining houses
in the District, at 1510 and 1512 21st Street NW,
several miles north of the museum, settling his
family into 1512 and using 1510 for a laboratory.
Several years after moving to Washington,
Dyar developed a new interest—mosquitoes.
Howard relates that Dyar first became interested
in mosquitoes in the summer of 1902, when he
read Howard’s recently published (Howard 1901)
book on mosquitoes. Dyar began studying the
markings and structure of mosquito larvae, and
‘‘thus began his work with this group which
lasted until the time of his death’’ (Howard 1933).
Mosquitoes soon became his primary interest.
Working from Monday through Saturday each
week, he identified a steady stream of specimens
coming into the USDA and USNM as mosquitoes became an increasingly important public
health concern in the early 1900s. In addition to
fulfilling his identification duties, he was instrumental in acquiring several large collections
important to the growth of the museum and its
ability to address the needs of the scientific
community at large (Epstein and Henson 1992).
His personal wealth made it possible for him to
travel and collect extensively in North and
Central America, to the enormous benefit of the
USNM and entomology community. He also
added to the collection through specimens he
reared in the house he bought adjoining his
family home, at 1510 21st Street NW, in
Washington, DC (Howard 1930, Epstein and
Henson 1992). Dyar was so crucial to the
museum’s mosquito work that when he was
traveling Howard would forward specimens
cross-country for him to identify. On one
occasion, when Dyar was planning an extended
trip to Panama, Howard wrote, ‘‘I am sorry that
from April 1st to September 1st the mosquitoes of
most of the United States will be in confusion. No
one—not even the mosquitoes themselves—will
know their names; and this may react disastrously
on the public’’ (Epstein and Henson 1992).
In his entomological work, Dyar enjoyed
‘‘lively debate’’ with his colleagues. He was
confident in his knowledge, passionate about his
beliefs, and fearless in putting forth his opinions.
He did not shy away from confrontations with
others, whether they were considered his professional superiors or not (Epstein and Henson
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JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MOSQUITO CONTROL ASSOCIATION
1992). Some recipients of his critiques simply
ignored him, others responded vigorously in kind.
Some who struck back chose creative venues,
such as the satirical poem entitled ‘‘When Dyar’s
List Comes Out,’’ published by a colleague in
1902 (Newcomb 1902).
One of Dyar’s most noteworthy foes was Dr.
Clara Southmayd Ludlow, a mosquito taxonomist for the US Army working at the Army
Medical Museum nearby in Washington, DC
(Carpenter 2005). Ludlow had 2 decades of
experience and a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown
University, and she was every bit as self-confident
and articulate as Dyar. She did not respond
meekly to his belittling her and her work; on the
contrary, she ably defended herself (Kitzmiller
and Ward 1987). Despite their public disagreements, Dyar and Ludlow published 3 papers
together (Dyar and Ludlow 1921a, 1921b, 1922),
but the volatile exchanges that characterized
Dyar’s professional relations with many of his
colleagues sometimes caused difficulties in his
career (Epstein and Henson 1992). His witty and
incisive repartee with colleagues certainly enlivened the scientific journals of the day (Epstein
and Henson 1992), and is one of the reasons he is
so well remembered.
Dyar’s clashes with colleagues gave rise to a
story that has been repeated often enough over
the years to become mythological in proportions.
The story relates that one of Dyar’s entomologist
enemies named a genus of moths Dyaria,
pronounced like the infamous illness diarrhea,
to spite him (Spilman 1984). In fact, in 1893,
Dyar’s friend and fellow lepidopterist Berthold
Neumoegen did describe a new genus that he
named Dyaria after his ‘‘faithful co-labourer and
friend Mr. H.G. Dyar’’ (Neumoegen 1893).
Pronunciation did not seem to present an issue
for either of them, perhaps because they pronounced the genus name ‘‘dyar-eye-a’’ rather
than ‘‘dyar-ee-a.’’ Neumoegen placed the new
genus in the family Liparidae, but in 1900 Dyar
referred it the family Pyralidae, subfamily Epipaschiinae, and synonymized it with the genus
Alippa, described by Aurivillius in 1894 (Dyar
1900). Alippa, and therefore Dyaria, were later
shown to be junior synonyms of the genus
Coenodomus, described by Walsingham in 1889
(Solis 1992), so the genus name Dyaria is no
longer in common use.
Dyar was on the government payroll as an
employee of the USDA Bureau of Entomology
for some of the years he worked at the USNM,
with the title of ‘‘expert’’ and an annual salary of
$1,800—about $22,000 in 2011 dollars (Epstein
and Henson 1992). To supplement his government funding, he engaged in commercial consulting on mosquito control efforts, espousing views
on surveillance and control in national parks that
were decades ahead of their time (Epstein and
VOL. 27, NO. 3
Henson 1992). As an example of his thinking, we
provide a quote that we believe Dr. Dyar would
have delighted in delivering to this audience.
During his time as a consultant on mosquito
control in national parks, he came to believe that
money was being wasted on the application of oil
to control nonpest species, on applications in
places where mosquitoes did not breed, and on
unnecessary 2nd applications—concerns to which
we can all relate today. Dyar wrote to his friend
L. O. Howard:
‘‘You know there is nothing I like less than
killing mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are the
subject of my interest, not their absence, and so
I feel that all anti-mosquito work is directly
detrimental to my special interest. I love to see
the mosquitoes in vast swarms, and if I had my
way, all the oil would be poured over the
human exterminators.’’
Though some might now count themselves
among the pantheon of distinguished targets of
Dyar’s acerbic wit, we certainly concur with his
reasoning concerning the control methods in use
at the time.
In 1924 Dyar’s background in the study of
mosquitoes was the basis for his selection to be
commissioned a captain in the Sanitary Department of the US Army Officers’ Reserve Corps
(Knight and Pugh 1974, Epstein and Henson
1992), attached to the Army Corps of Engineers
(M. R. Dyar, personal communication). He was
one of a very small and select group—records
indicate that only 14 army entomologists were
commissioned in the reserves in the period
between World War I and World War II (Shultz
1992). Published records don’t provide details
about his duties, but descendants believe he used
the accompanying stipend to advance his entomological life-history studies (M. R. Dyar,
personal communication). His primary workplace remained the USNM, where he was among
his peers—see Fig. 2.
Dyar’s interest in the immature stages of
insects continued throughout his career. He wrote
numerous papers that included detailed descriptions of mosquito larvae, and 3 that dealt
exclusively with them: 2 as sole author, ‘‘A
synoptic table of North American mosquito
larvae’’ (Dyar 1905) and ‘‘Key to the known
larvae of the mosquitoes of the United States’’
(Dyar 1906), and 1 as senior author, ‘‘The larvae
of Culicidae classified as independent organisms’’
(Dyar and Knab 1906). While observing the
immature stages of Lepidoptera in life-cycle
studies, he noted that the head capsule widths
of larvae followed a geometric progression in
growth through successive instars. In a paper
published in 1890, he described this phenomenon
and its principles, which became known as Dyar’s
SEPTEMBER 2011
2011 MEMORIAL LECTURE HONOREE
339
Fig. 2. Dyar with his colleagues at the US National Museum, May 21, 1925 (Smithsonian Institution Archives,
image no. 84-3567). Left to right, standing: Arthur Burton Gahan, Charles Tull Greene, William Schaus, Adam
Giede Boving, Andrew N. Caudell, William M. Mann, Henry Ellsworth Ewing, Harrison Gray Dyar (arrow),
Eugene Schwartz, Sievart Allan Rohwer, Leland Ossian Howard, Ray Shannon, W. Samuel Fisher, Herbert
Spencer Barber, unidentified, Robert Asa Cushman, Mrs. A. C. Willis; kneeling: Mildred (Sheilds) Everhart,
Eleanor Armstrong, Janice Kyser, Frances (Kaufmann) Appleby, Carol [no surname given], unidentified, Mrs.
Yates; seated: Miss Sellins, Mathilde M. Carpenter, Eunice Myers, and Nettie Grochek.
Law, or Dyar’s Rule (Dyar 1890). Although
initially based on observations of Lepidoptera
larvae, Dyar’s Law applies to immature insects in
general and is widely used in entomological
studies to discern instars of immature insects, to
predict the size of instars missing from samples,
and other applications.
His work on adult insects was equally significant, culminating in his landmark revision of
mosquito classification, Mosquitoes of the Americas, published in 1928 (Dyar 1928). Fusing his
knowledge of larval and adult stages, Dyar
pioneered the use of adult and immature morphological characters (Epstein and Henson 1992),
a new approach that became the standard, and is
still the classical method. When the Carnegie
Institution of Washington provided a grant to
Leland O. Howard for the preparation of a
monograph on the mosquitoes of the New World,
Dyar and Frederick Knab were chosen to assist
with the task (Lytle 2003). Dyar and Knab in
collaboration are primarily responsible for the
taxonomic portions of the comprehensive 4volume work that resulted, Mosquitoes of North
and Central America and the West Indies (Howard
et al. 1912–1917). Dyar maintained a constant
publication stream, authoring a total of 208
papers, reports, books, and other contributions
concerning mosquitoes during the period 1901–
1929 (Knight and Pugh 1974).
In addition to his museum work, Dyar was
editor of one of the great entomological journals
of his day, the Journal of the New York
Entomological Society, from 1904 to 1907, and
he served on the editorial board of the Proceedings
of the Entomological Society of Washington from
1908 to 1912 (Epstein and Henson 1992). In 1913
he started up his own journal, Insecutor Inscitiae
Menstruus, which was devoted primarily to
Lepidoptera at the outset, but developed considerable involvement with mosquito taxonomy in its
prime years (Knight 1974). The title can be loosely
translated as Monthly Persecutor of Ignorance, a
name ‘‘with attitude,’’ like its creator, though he
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Table 1.
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MOSQUITO CONTROL ASSOCIATION
VOL. 27, NO. 3
Disease vector status of mosquitoes originally described by Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. and collaborators
(Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit 2011).
Species
Aedes angustivittatus Dyar and Knab, 1907
Ae. infirmatus Dyar and Knab, 1906
Ae. melanimon Dyar, 1924
Anopheles bellator Dyar and Knab, 1906
An. neivai Howard, Dyar, and Knab, 1912
An. punctimacula Dyar and Knab, 1906
Culex erythrothorax Dyar, 1907
Cx. ocossa Dyar and Knab, 1919
Cx. taeniopus Dyar and Knab, 1907
Deinocerites pseudes Dyar and Knab, 1909
Haemagogus janthinomys Dyar, 1921
Hg. leucocelaenus (Dyar and Shannon, 1924)
Vector status
Ilheus virus has been isolated from Ae. angustivittatus collected
near Almirante, Panama, and Venezuelan equine
encephalitis (VEE) virus in Colombia
Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), Keystone, Trivittatus, and
Tensaw viruses have been isolated from Ae. infirmatus
Vector of Western equine encephalomyelitis (WEE) virus and
West Nile virus (WNV)
Primary vector of malaria in southeastern Brazil and Trinidad
Primary vector of malaria in the coastal south of
Buenaventura, Colombia, and has been found infected with
yellow fever virus in Panama, and Guaroa virus in Colombia
Vector of malaria
Vector of WEE virus and WNV
Vector of WEE and has the potential to be a very important
vector of VEE
VEE virus has been isolated from this species, and it is also
considered a vector of several Bunyaviruses, including Ossa,
Guama, Ananindeua, Bimiti, Mirim, and Guaratuba viruses
Vector of VEE and St. Louis encephalitis viruses in laboratory
studies
Primary vector of sylvan yellow fever endemic in several
regions of South America
Yellow fever and Una virus have been isolated from Hg.
leucocelaenus in Brazil
noted in the inaugural issue that ‘‘[t]he title of our
publication need not be considered to have any
personal application. We endeavor to dispel, to
some degree, our general ignorance of the forms
of insect life by descriptions of species and genera,
life-histories, and other pertinent facts’’ (Dyar
1913). Creating his own journal gave him freedom
from page limitations and disagreeing editors,
allowing him to publish more papers with less
compromising of his original thought. As publisher and editor, he produced 14 volumes, ceasing
publication in 1926.
LEGACY
Dyar was spending his usual Saturday at the
National Museum on January 19, 1929, when he
suffered a stroke at his desk. He was hospitalized
for treatment but died 2 days later on January 21,
3 wk short of his 63rd birthday (Epstein and
Henson 1992). He had become so well known for
his mosquito work that The New York Times and
The Washington Post both produced formal
obituaries, headlining his expertise in mosquitoes
(Anonymous 1929a, 1929b). His lifelong friend
Leland Ossian Howard eulogized him at the
annual meeting of the New Jersey Associated
Executives in Mosquito Control Association in
February 1929 with these words: ‘‘It will be years,
I fear many years, before he can be replaced by an
American worker of even approximate knowledge and qualifications’’ (Patterson 2009).
Dyar’s personal life has been the subject of
considerable writing, some of it inaccurate and
unjustly sensationalized. His 1st marriage, on
October 15, 1889, in Los Angeles, CA, was to
Zella Peabody (White 1910), and his 2nd, on April
26, 1921, in Reno, NV, was to Wellesca (Pollock)
Allen (Engle 2003). By his 1st marriage, Dr. Dyar
had a daughter, Dorothy, and a son, Otis P., and
by his 2nd marriage he had 3 sons, Roshan W.,
Harrison G., and Wallace J. Dyar. His descendants have followed varied walks of life, and Dyar
remains the only entomologist in the family tree.
At the memorial lecture in March 2011, we were
honored by the presence of 2 of Dr. Dyar’s
grandchildren, Michael R. Dyar, who is a
naturalist at Yosemite National Park, and Sharon
Dyar Hopkins, who is a retired executive living in
North Carolina. Their father was Dr. Dyar’s 1st
son by his 2nd marriage, Roshan W. Dyar.
For the most part, Dyar’s biographers fail to
capture the truths behind the legends surrounding
Dyar, with 1 prominent exception—an exquisitely
researched biography produced by Dr. Marc
Epstein and Dr. Pamela Henson of the Smithsonian Institution (Epstein and Henson 1992). It
accurately covers the many facets of Dyar’s public
and personal life, setting his life in the context of
the time and the people with whom he worked and
lived, and provides the truest portrayal of him as a
person as well as a professional; their article
should be consulted by anyone with an interest in
Dyar’s more personal side.
Dyar’s legacy for the American Mosquito
Control Association community is manyfold.
He brought his intelligence and analytic ability
to bear on mosquitoes during the time when they
SEPTEMBER 2011
2011 MEMORIAL LECTURE HONOREE
Table 2. Patronyms honoring Harrison Gray Dyar Jr.
These patronyms are presented in their original epithet
form to illustrate the breadth of Dyar’s influence among
insect taxonomists.
Diptera (16)
Cecidomyiidae
Lestremia dyari Felt, 1908
Chironomidae
Tanytarsus dyari Townes, 1945
Tanypus dyari Coquillett, 1902
Corethrellidae
Corethrella dyari Lane, 1942
Culicidae
Culex dyari Coquillett, 1902
Deinocerites dyari Belkin and Hogue, 1959
Genus Dyarina Bonne-Wepster and Bonne, 1921
Mansonia dyari Belkin, Heinemann, and Page,
1970
Psorophora dyari Petrocchi, 1927
Tripteroides dyari Bohart and Farner, 1944
Wyeomyia dyari Lane and Cerqueira, 1942
Dixidae
Dixa dyari Garrett, 1924
Limoniidae
Erioptera dyari Alexander, 1924
Phoridae
Aphiochaeta dyari Malloch, 1912
Simuliidae
Subgenus Dyarella Vargas, Martı́nez Palacios, and
Dı́az Nájera, 1946
Syrphidae
Sphecomyia dyari Shannon, 1925
Hymenoptera (10)
Braconidae
Orthostigma dyari Fischer, 1969
Diprionidae
Neodiprion dyari Rohwer, 1918
Encyrtidae
Anagyrus dyari Girault, 1915
Ichneumonidae
Crypturus dyari Ashmead, 1897
Tenthredinidae
Amauronematus dyari Marlatt, 1896
Blennocampa dyari Benson, 1930
Hemichroa dyari Rohwer, 1918
Macrophya dyari Rohwer, 1911
Pristiphora dyari Marlatt, 1896
Pteronus dyari Marlatt, 1896
Lepidoptera (43)
Acrolophidae
Amydria dyarella Dietz, 1905
Arctiidae
Agylla dyari Beutelspacher, 1983
Callimorpha lecontei dyarii Merrick, 1901
Choreutidae
Choreutis dyarella Kearfott, 1902
Hemerophila dyari Busck, 1900
Crambidae
Diatraea dyari Box, 1930
Evergestis dyaralis Fernald, 1901
341
Table 2.
Continued.
Gelechiidae
Gelechia dyariella Busck, 1903
Geometridae
Antepione dyari Grossbeck, 1916
Eupithecia dyarata Taylor, 1906
Gabriola dyari Taylor, 1904
Nemoria dyarii Hulst, 1900
Pero dyari Cassino and Swett, 1922
Sabulodes dyari Grossbeck, 1908
Gracillariidae
Chilocampyla dyariella Busck, 1900
Lasiocampidae
Gastropacha dyari Rivers, 1893
Tolype dyari Draudt, 1927
Limacodidae
Epiperola dyari Dognin, 1910
Phobetron dyari Barnes and Benjamin, 1926
Lymantriidae
Genus Dyaria Neumoegen, 1893
Megalopygidae
Macara dyari Dognin, 1914
Megalopyge dyari Hopp, 1935
Mesoscia dyari Schaus, 1912
Podalia dyari Joicey and Talbot, 1922
Noctuidae
Acanthermia dyari Hampson, 1926
Cirrhophanus dyari Cockerell, 1899
Eriopyga dyari Draudt, 1924
Euclidia dyari Smith, 1903
Eutelia dyari Draudt, 1939
Stiria dyari Hill, 1924
Notodontidae
Azaxia dyari Schaus, 1911
Hemiceras dyari Strand, 1911
Hemipecteros dyari Schaus, 1920
Nymphalidae
Lymanopoda dyari Pyrcz, 2004
Phyciodes tharos dyari Gunder, 1928
Phycitidae
Promylea dyari Heinrich, 1956
Pyralidae
Acrobasis dyarella Ely, 1910
Saturniidae
Agapema anona dyari Cockerell, 1914, ‘‘Dyar’s Silk
Moth’’
Genus Eudyaria Grote, 1896
Euleucophaeus dyari Draudt, 1930
Sesiidae
Aegeria tibialis dyari Cockerell, 1908
Tortricidae
Enarmonia dyarana Kearfott, 1907
Zygaenidae
Tetraclonia dyaria Jordan, 1913
Neuroptera (1)
Hemerobiidae
Hemerobius dyari Currie, 1904
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JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MOSQUITO CONTROL ASSOCIATION
were first receiving major attention as disease
vectors, and became a pioneer in mosquito
systematics. His revisions of higher classifications, descriptions of species in 3 taxonomic
orders, and the collections of specimens he
amassed, all form a body of work valuable to
the profession of entomology. He was an acutely
observant chronicler of mosquito biology, and his
detailed life-history studies are of tremendous
value. Dyar, alone or with collaborators, described some 661 new mosquito species, of which
221 (33.4%) are currently valid (Wilkerson,
personal communication). Of these, 12 species
have medical significance—see Table 1.
Dyar and collaborators Frederick Knab and
Raymond Shannon described 6 species in the
genus Toxorhynchites (Tx. gigantulus Dyar and
Shannon 1925, Tx. guadeloupensis Dyar and
Knab 1906, Tx. moctezuma Dyar and Knab
1906, Tx. nepenthis Dyar and Shannon 1925, Tx.
rutilus septentrionalis Dyar and Knab 1906, and
Tx. theobaldi Dyar and Knab 1906), which are of
interest because of their potential for biological
control. Toxorhynchites larvae are predacious on
larvae of other mosquito species, and adult
females as well as males do not bite humans or
other animals, and feed exclusively on nectar and
other sugary substances, characteristics appropriate to Dr. Dyar’s forward-thinking environmental consciousness.
Dyar has been honored many times over the
years by his colleagues through the bestowal of
some 70 patronyms—see Table 2. The total has
been somewhat reduced by synonymies over the
years, but the original intent illustrates the
breadth as well as the depth of Dyar’s work in
the entomological community.
Of the mosquitoes named in Dyar’s honor, 2
have medical significance: Venezuelan equine
encephalitis virus has been isolated from Mansonia dyari Belkin, Heinemann, and Page, 1970, and
Deinocerites dyari Belkin and Hogue, 1959,
though neither is strongly anthropophilic so their
potential for involvement as vectors of human
disease is limited.
In summary, Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. has been
honored many times over the years by his
colleagues, through the patronyms, praise, and
poignant recollections. Today, we honor him for
his seminal contributions to culicidology, and for
his contributions that extend beyond mosquitoes
and mosquito bionomics to the broader field of
public health entomology.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to express our deepest
appreciation to Dafydd N. Dyar, Sharon Dyar
Hopkins, and Michael R. Dyar for kindly sharing
their personal Dyar family knowledge and sup-
VOL. 27, NO. 3
porting the research into their grandfather’s life so
essential to the memorial process. We thank
Richard Robbins of the Armed Forces Pest
Management Board, Richard Wilkerson of the
Walter Reed Biosystematics Laboratory, and
Mary Markey, Ellen Alers, and Tad Bennicoff of
the Smithsonian Institution for their individual
support, and the professional staffs of the Library
of Congress and the National Agricultural Library
for their general assistance in acquiring works
consulted for the preparation of this memorial. We
thank Captain Stanton Cope, US Navy, Medical
Service Corps, Director of the Armed Forces Pest
Management Board, Washington, DC, for his
constant support and encouragement from concept through completion of this memorial.
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