Gregor W. Yeates

Gregor William Yeates, publishing as GW Yeates (19 May 1944 – 6 August 2012), was a New Zealand soil zoologist and ecologist. He was "considered the world's leading authority in soil nematode ecology, a subject of economic and ecological importance." His PhD (under Wally Clark) was on nematodes of dune sands, and was completed in 1968 at the University of Canterbury. His DSc was also at the University of Canterbury. Yeates's early work on nematodes in sand dunes represented some of the first detailed work on nematodes in non-agricultural settings, and 'representing some of the most detailed assessments of nematode communities ever conducted in natural environments.'

Yeates spent most of his working life at Soil Bureau, a division of DSIR, which became Landcare Research. He published over 200 papers and described over 100 species in genera including Longidorus, Xiphinema, Hemicycliophora, Trischistoma and Dorylaimida. Holotypes of his are the earliest in the National Nematode Collection of New Zealand. He was awarded a Nuffield Foundation Commonwealth Travelling Fellowship to study at Rothamsted in 1977–1978. and the Royal Society of New Zealand at both a local and a national level.

Honours and offices Nuffield Travelling Scholarship (1977) Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Soil Science (1995) Office holder in the Royal Society of New Zealand Manawatu Branch Upper Hutt City Councillor and Hutt Valley Drainage Board member from 1973 to 1977 The paper is a study in the ecological role of nematodes structured by taxa. Gregor Yeates. Earthworms, Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 27-Sep-11 Plains' Science: Inventions, Innovations and Discoveries from the Manawatu v1. (2011), co-edited by Vince Neall and Gregor Yeates, Royal Society of New Zealand Manawatu Branch and the Science Centre Inc..