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Life and legacy of an outstanding ciliate taxonomist, Alfred Kahl (1877-1946), including a facsimile of his forgotten monograph from 1943

2004; Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego; Volume: 43; Linguagem: Inglês

1689-0027

Wilhelm Foissner, Fritz Wenzel,

Polar Research and Ecology

The facsimile presentation of a forgotten ciliate monograph of Alfred Kahl from the year 1943 is a convenient occasion for a detailed biography of this outstanding ciliate researcher. Kahl was born in the village of Warwerort, that is, at the north coast of Germany on 18 t h February 1877. Nothing is known about his parents and youth. At the turn of the century, when Kahl was twenty, he became a primary school master; later, he taught English, French, and natural history in a Gymnasium (high school) in Hamburg, where he married and had a daughter, who initiated, as a student of the famous Eduard Reichenow, his microscopic studies. Kahl published his first paper, a monograph with 241 pages, in the year 1926, when he was nearly fifty. In the following nine years, Kahl produced 1800 printed pages, containing, inter alia, the descriptions of 17 new ciliate families, 57 new genera, about 700 (!) new species, and thousands of excellent pen- and -ink drawings. Although Kahl had contact with several academic protozoologists, such as E. Reichenow and H. Kirby, he was a self-made man working alone and performing his meticulous live observations with a simple bright field microscope equipped, however, with a 100:1 oil immersion objective. Kahl did not only excellent original research, but also thorough taxonomic revisions. This culminated in the 1930-35 monographs in Dahl's Die Tierwelt Deutschlands series. These four reviews, which bring together and freshly characterize most ciliates known to that time, soon became classics and are Kahl's most important scientific legacy. Kahl's meticulous observations and phylogenetic ideas also influenced the higher classification of the ciliates, though this is less obvious than for species taxonomy. After 10 years of intense work, Kahl abruptly stopped publishing in 1935, possibly because of problems with some academic protozoologists and zoologists. However, his reviews in the Tierwelt Deutschlands series soon made him famous throughout the protozoological landscape. This might have stimulated him to commence work again in the early forties, when he produced a revision of the 1930-35 monographs. The revision should be a book addendum for the subscribers of the Mikrokosmos, a popular journal for amateur microscopists. Unfortunately, only part I, here reproduced as a facsimile, was published in 1943, while part 2 was likely lost during the Second World War troubles. This fine piece of work is not only a simple repetition of the previous reviews, but contains 10 new taxa, the freshwater species described between 1935 and 1940, several nomenclatural novelities, interesting remarks on various genera, and many improved figures. Two of the 10 new species were rediscovered recently, and one is redescribed and neotypified here, viz., Phialinides muscicola (Kahl, 1943) nov. comb. Kahl used the morphospecies concept and emphasized that ciliate diversity is much greater than previously recognized. This and other matters caused conflicts with some academic protozoologists, especially A. Wetzel, who disliked Kahl's simple drawings and splitting of seemingly very similar species. However, time confirmed Kahl, whose life and work are an impressive example of how to become an unforgettable taxonomist: excellent original research and revisions, diligence, objectivity, respect for the field's history and, last but not least, a good deal of talent. Kahl died in November 1946. The reason and his grave are unknown.