Charles Edwin Clarke

Charles Edwin Clarke (1885 – 17 September 1952) was a New Zealand dentist and amateur entomologist, who specialised in collecting lepidoptera and coleoptera.

Biography

Clarke was born in 1885. in Dunedin. Clarke worked as a dentist as a profession, and collected specimens as a hobby. Most of Clarke's specimens were collected between the 1910s and 1940s, and Clarke published findings in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand between 1920 and 1934.

In 1915, a moth specimen collected by Clarke from Flagstaff Hill, Dunedin was used by George Howes to describe the moth species Hydriomena clarkei, which Howes named after Clarke.

Clarke discovered and identified numerous moth species between 1920 and 1936, including Ericodesma cuneata, Heterocrossa sanctimonea and Asterivora urbana. George Hudson to describe Asaphodes glaciata in 1925, and by entomologist Alfred Philpott, who described Proteodes clarkei in 1926, naming the species after Clarke.

In 1929, Clarke donated much of his insect collection to Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Clarke died on 17 September 1952. and the British Museum.

Personal life

Clarke was a close friend of New Zealand coleopterist Ernest Richard Fairburn.

Taxa named by Clarke

Asaphodes citroena (1934) Asaphodes ida (1926) Asterivora chatuidea] (1926) Asterivora urbana (1926) Ericodesma cuneata (1926) Glyphipterix scintilla (1926) Heterocrossa sanctimonea (1926) Kiwaia calaspidea (1934) Mallobathra abyssina (1934) Mallobathra cataclysma (1934) Mallobathra memotuina (1934) Rhathamictis nocturna (1926) Sabatinca lucilia (1920) Scoparia sylvestris (1926) Scoparia tuicana (1926) Tatosoma monoviridisata (1920) Tinea aetherea (1926)