José María Hugo de la Fuente Morales

José María Hugo de la Fuente Morales (Pozuelo de Calatrava, Ciudad Real, 1 April 1855 - 21 June 1932) was a Spanish entomologist.Son of the Madrilenian doctor Ildefonso de la Fuente Villanueva y de Anastasia Ramona Morales Hornero, a native of Pozuelo de Calatrava, he was the second of nine children, of who only four would reach adult age. He began training as a priest studying Latin in Moral Calatrava, and completing his studies in the seminaries of Toledo and Jaén. During breaks in these studies, he sent an insect, that he identified as "Pycnogaster graellsi" (an orthopteran) to Ignacio Bolivar Urrutia, university professor of entomology of the Central University;he, after confirming Morales accurate identification , sent three drawers of insects to him so that he did not leave his investigations and he could identify the new species that he found. That excited the scientific sense of the young seminarist, and ended with his becoming one of the European leaders of entomology. Priest in Ciudad Real in 1879 he moved to a Almagro in 1888. There he dedicated himself to add to increase to his collection of reptiles and amphibians and composed a booklet of poetry that is conserved in the Museum of Ciudad Real. After around a year in Ciudad Real he became coassistant of the parish of San Bartholomew between 1890 and 1891. Finally he fulfilled his great desire, expressed in his poetry, to return as priest to his town, Pozuelo de Calatrava, from where he was no longer transferred and he began intesive entomological activity, for which he learned different languages in order to understand the specialized bibliography.There also he completed an important library specializing in entomology of more than four hundred volumes in several languages and an important collection of insects that is also conserved with other works in the Museum of Ciudad Real. Two years later the "Real Spanish Society of Natural History" arrived at Pozuelo begin a collaboration. The first communication appeared in the "Actas" of 1893 , with the description of two new species of Orthoptera. A visit to the bath of Archena in Murcia because of his rheumatism led to the discovery of a great number of new species. In 1897 he began to publish "Datos para la fauna de la provincia de Ciudad Real"

Works

*"Catálogo sistemático-geográfico de los coleópteros observados en la Península Ibérica, Pirineos propiamente dichos y Baleares" (1918-1932)
*"Tablas analíticas para la clasificación de los coleópteros de la Península Ibérica". Barcelona: Imprenta Altés, 1927.
*"La fauna de la provincia de Ciudad Real Ciudad Real": Tipografía del Hospicio Provincial, 1929.

References

Miguel Sánchez Caminero, José María de la Fuente 1855-2005. 150 aniversario del nacimiento del "Cura de los bichos". Ciudad Real: Diputación Provincial, 2005.

Translated fron Spanish Wikipedia