The life and work of Petrônio Alves Coelho ( 4 November 1937 – 28 November 2011 ) , with a list of his taxa and publications

Luis Ernesto Arruda Bezerra and Alexandre Oliveira Almeida(LEAB) Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Departamento de Oceanografia, Programa de Pos-Graduacao em Oceanografia. Av. Arquitetura, s/n, Cidade Universitaria. 50.670-901 Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. E-mail: luiseab@gmail.com (AOA) Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Departamento de Ciencias Biologicas. Rod. Ilheus-Itabuna, km 16, 45662-900 Ilheus, Bahia, Brazil. E-mail: aalmeida@uesc.brCosta Coelho, four children, two of whom, Petronio Alves Coelho Filho and Monica Alves Coelho-Santos, are also carcinologists, and five grandchildren. Prof. Petronio was born on 4 November 1937 in the city of Recife, the youngest of five children of Heronildes Alves Coelho and Cesina Alves Coelho. He grew up fascinated by a “big ship”, which he could see from his house near the Port of Recife. This ship was the


The life and work of Petrônio Alves Coelho (4 November 1937 -28 November 2011), with a list of his taxa and publications
Luis Ernesto Arruda Bezerra and Alexandre Oliveira Almeida (LEAB) Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Departamento de Oceanografia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Oceanografia.Av.Arquitetura, s/n, Cidade Universitária.50.670-901Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.E-mail: luiseab@gmail.com(AOA) Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Departamento de Ciências Biológicas.Rod.Ilhéus-Itabuna, km 16, 45662-900 Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil.E-mail: aalmeida@uesc.brCosta Coelho, four children, two of whom, Petrônio Alves Coelho Filho and Mônica Alves Coelho-Santos, are also carcinologists, and five grandchildren.Prof. Petrônio was born on 4 November 1937 in the city of Recife, the youngest of five children of Heronildes Alves Coelho and Cesina Alves Coelho.He grew up fascinated by a "big ship", which he could see from his house near the Port of Recife.This ship was the Almirante Saldanha, at that time a school ship of the Brazilian Navy, and later a research vessel.Some years later, Prof. Petrônio would take part in several oceanographic expeditions on board this very same ship.
He was graduated in Agronomy from the Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, in 1960.After dedicating several years to the study of insects, especially dragonflies, in 1962 he obtained a position as researcher at the Laboratório de Ciências do Mar (LACIMAR) of UFPE, until 1968, when he became Auxiliary Researcher.Finally, in 1969, he obtained a position as Assistant Professor.In the beginning of his career, he started a crustacean collection that would eventually become the third-largest crustacean collection in Brazil hosted at of UFPE.From the 1960s through the 1980s, Prof. Petrônio took part in important oceanographic expeditions along the Brazilian coast (Appendix 1), including the French Calypso Expedition off the Atlantic coast of South America in 1961 (Forest, 1966).Collections carried out during these expeditions yielded most of the specimens held in the DOCEAN collection.
The carcinological community has been greatly saddened to learn that Professor Petrônio Alves Coelho, retired professor at the Departamento de Oceanografia (DOCEAN) of the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), passed away on 28 November 2011, due to a heart attack while recovering from a cerebrovascular accident (CVA).Prof. Petrônio is survived by his wife Maria José From late 1966 through early 1967, he visited several institutions in France and Germany, as part of a technical collaborative program between Brazil and France under the supervision of Dr. Jacques Forest.During his visit to Europe, Prof. Petrônio acquired many papers and references, as well as expertise in decapod taxonomy.After returning to Brazil, he achieved an international reputation and kept in touch with the most important decapod taxonomists of the time, such as Fenner Chace, Jacques Forest, Danièle Guinot, and Lipke Holthuis, among others.His closest colleague and great friend was Dr. Gustavo A. S. de Melo of the Museu de Zoologia, Universidade de São Paulo (USP).The two began a friendship across academic walls, visiting each other frequently and exchanging specimens from their collections.In the early 1970s, he established a long and prolific partnership with Dr. Marilena Ramos-Porto, one of his former students.
In the mid-1970s, the first studies on the viability of freshwater-shrimp farming in Brazil, including testing the farming potential of the indigenous Brazilian species and the introduction of Macrobrachium rosenbergii (De Man, 1879) in 1977, were performed in the Department of Oceanography of UFPE (Cavalcanti, 1998).Before starting these studies, members of the DOCEAN staff visited shrimp farms in Hawaii and Japan to acquire expertise on shrimp farming.Prof. Petrônio actively participated in all these activities.Most of the farming technology first introduced into Brazil was based on practices in Hawaii (Cavalcanti, 1998).
In 1976, Prof. Petrônio obtained his Ph.D. at UFPE, with a thesis on "Biogeography and bionomy of reptantian decapod crustaceans of the Brazilian equatorial region".
In 1982, he was among the founders of the postgraduate course in Oceanography of DOCEAN, which is one of the most important and traditional programs in Brazil.Over the course of his career, he trained and inspired many graduate students in several crustacean groups, including cirripeds, stomatopods, amphipods, tanaids, and decapods; and supervised 35 master's dissertation and eight doctoral thesis projects, as well as uncountable undergraduate students.
Author of over 170 publications, Prof. Petrônio described 29 decapod species and published important papers on the taxonomy, distribution, and biogeography of decapod crustaceans in the South Atlantic, fisheries, and shrimp farming (Appendices 2 and 3).His contributions and enthusiasm helped to make him one of the most important personages in Brazilian zoology, as illustrated by the tributes received from the Brazilian Society of Zoology -SBZ (1998) and the Brazilian Society of Carcinology -SBC (2000 and2010).Six crustacean species were named in his honor (Appendix 4).
Recently, he was supported by a CNPq scholarship (DCR) to develop research at the Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL) regarding the shrimp fishery in the mouth of the São Francisco River, in Penedo city, together with his son Petrônio Filho.
Prof. Petrônio was an easygoing person, always facing problems with calm and serenity.He was known for his rich sense of humor and for his passion for coffee.He was often seen walking through the department early in the morning, looking for "the poison" as he used to call the coffee, singing and with a smile on his face.Even after he retired, Prof. Petrônio continued to go to the university each day and to advise students interested in crustacean ecology and taxonomy, writing papers and looking for new references in the "crab burrow", as he used to call his office.
Since the beginning of his career, he intended to leave a contribution not only to the science of carcinology, but to Brazilian society, as he wrote: "In 1960, when I first started the study of crustaceans, very little was known about these species in Brazil.Although the group had been studied by foreign expeditions, the samples obtained would not be as valuable as those collected by local researchers.Having that in mind, I started a research line on ecological distribution and the biology of potential farming species.A few years later, other issues arose, related to taxonomy, systematics, and geographic distribution.Additionally, I developed an interest in benthic organisms.The importance of this work relates to several fields of human knowledge.Because they are dominant in aquatic ecosystems, the conservation of crustaceans is very important and therefore their study is essential.Moreover, they are economically important for fisheries, and more recently for aquaculture.Thus, the studies carried out so far as well as the future studies will represent my contribution of productive potential to the well-being of Brazilian society."2( 7): 3-8.