Discovering the alternation of generations in salps (Tunicata, Thaliacea): Adelbert von Chamisso’s dissertation “De Salpa” 1819 - its material, origin and reception in the early nineteenth century

Abstract

The exiled French nobleman Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838) is mostly known as a poet of the Romantic era in Germany, but less so as a keen and accurate naturalist. However, he was a much respected zoologist and botanist at his time. On board the Russian brig Rurik between 1815 and 1818 he explored some of the Pacific coasts and islands, from where he brought back rich collections of animals and plants, among them also salps (Tunicata) which he was one of the first to not only catch and preserve but observe, depict and describe in detail from living condition. Even more important than his collection of natural history objects (which subsequently mostly fell into oblivion in the museums) were Chamisso’s observations and insights in natural history. These include his findings in botanical taxonomy and geographical distribution of plants, but most eminent was his discovery of the alternation of generations in salps which was the first description of the phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Here we report first on the re-discovery of Chamisso’s original samples of salps from the Russian Rurik expedition. This material is nearly completely extant in the marine invertebrate collection of the Berlin Natural History Museum and was re-studied and compared to Chamisso’s original descriptions here for the first time since over a century. We then detail Chamisso’s observations on salps and their alternating generations, based on his own published accounts, in particular his dissertation of 1819, but also his article for the journal Isis in 1820. We add examples of the sketches found in an unpublished notebook and Chamisso’s original manuscript, made during or immediately after the Rurik circumnavigation, which we found in the archives of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin. We also discuss, presenting English translations of them, key passages of Chamisso’s original Latin account “De Salpa ”. Finally we look into the history of reception of Chamisso’s discovery and insight on salps during the first half of the nineteenth century (© 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 7 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.