Collaborator of the Week: Guido T. Poppe

Photo from wikipedia.org

Guido T. Poppe is known for his contribution in conchology research and an author of more than 20 books and publications that mainly focus on families Volutidae and Trochidae. At a young age, he has had a great interest in the oceans and the different forms of life living in it.  His fascination led him to develop a career as a malacologist. While in this field, and in numerous years of diving in European waters and tropical seas, he was able to compile an extensive collection of photographs of seashells and other marine organisms [1, 2].

In 2003, Guido Poppe decided to move from Belgium to the Philippines and continued his profession as a conchologist. He described over 130 of new molluscs species [2] and mostly on the Philippine malacofauna [1]. In fact, there are more than 30 species that have been named after him having the epithets poppei, “guidopoppei” or guidoi [2].

In 2010, he together with his son Philippe Poppe, became collaborators of SeaLifeBase and have contributed over 2,000 photos as well as 2 volumes of their book “Philippines Marine Mollusks”. They also have an online database of digital pictures, the POPPE-IMAGES, aiming to document the marine life in the Philippines [3]. This information system provides over 70, 000 online images [3]. Also, they created the journal, Visaya, a rapidly growing periodical specialized in the taxonomy of mollusca. [2].

TRIVIA: Guido Poppe named among the over 300 shells he already described, the topsnail Calliostoma mariae after his mother Maria Peyskens, and three other sea snails species Calliostoma philippei (Poppe, 2004), Calliotropis philippei (Poppe, Tagaro & Dekker, 2006) and Bayerotrochus philpoppei (Anseeuw, Poppe & Goto, 2006) after his son [1].

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[1] Guido Poppe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_Poppe [Accessed 03/05/2015].

[2] Guido T. Poppe. http://www.poppe-images.com/?t=5 [Accessed 03/05/2015].

[3] Poppe Images About Us. http://www.poppe-images.com/?t=2 [Accessed 03/05/2015].

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