Jacobus van der Vecht

Jacobus van der Vecht (5 July 1906 – 15 March 1992), nicknamed Jaap, was a Dutch entomologist who specialised in Hymenoptera, especially those of the East Indies and New Guinea.

Early life Van der Vecht was born in The Hague on 5 July 1906. His father, the Master of the Wine Cellars at the court of the then Queen Dowager of the Netherlands, Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, had an interest in natural history and reared butterflies as a hobby. He enjoyed taking his sons on walks to study nature and this encouraged a passion for biology in Jacobus.

Van der Vecht left school in The Hague and enrolled to study biology at the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. Here he began to study the Aculeate Hymenoptera especially the taxonomy of bees, concentrating on the large mining bee genus Andrena and the wasps in the family Sphecidae. He graduated with a master's degree in 1928.

Later Van der Vecht grew interested in the biogeography of the Indo-Malaysian area which became an important area of research for him. He began his research in this subject resulted in a paper on the carpenter bees (Xylocopa) of Celebes, a paper which is still important to workers trying to understand the diversity of the carpenter-bees on Sulawesi. Another important paper is on the evolution of some Indo-Australian Eumenes wasps. He observed distinctive differences between the more uniform colour pattern shown by vespid wasps on the large islands in the region and the highly variable patterns of the same species on the small, outer islands of the archipelago. This led to an interest in the evolutionary importance of nest structure in the wasps in the family Vespidae. In addition, he discovered "Van der Vecht's gland", which is an organ which produces a secretion which some groups of vespids use to protect their nests from ants.

During the latter part of his career Van der Vecht had an important role in the study of Hymenoptera and as a teacher of taxonomy. Together with Charles Ferriere he revived the pre-war Hymenopterorum Catalogus, a work which is still in progress. He was an early advocate of the importance of phylogenetics for taxonomy. He was president of the Netherlands Entomological Society between 1961 and 1968. He travelled on collecting trips, often with his wife, to destinations such as Suriname, Papua New Guinea and Argentina where he collected Hymenoptera specimens as well as meeting friends and colleagues in the field of Aculeate Hymenoptera. During his life he was an enthusiastic collector of Hymenoptera and during his retirement he continued, especially collecting specimens of parasitic Hymenoptera around the village of Putten, where he and Bep had made their home in a bungalow named Andrena after the bees which he started to study at the beginning of his career, and its surroundings. He was energetic in helping to improve the collection of Hymenoptera in the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie at Leiden as well as continuing to publish papers into his eighties. In retirement Van der Vecht and his wife struggled with bouts of mental illness. His wife died in 1986 and their only child had died as an infant before the war; the couple were unable to have any more children after their experiences in the Japanese prison camps during the war.

Species named in honour of Van der Vecht A number of species have been named in honour of Van der Vecht by other entomologists, mainly Hymenoptera, and examples these include the ichneumonid Aulosaphes vechti, the eusocial hover wasp Liostenogaster vechti, the small carpenter bee Ceratina vechti, the "tarantula hawk" Hemipepsis vechti, as well as the potter wasps Epsilon vechti and Labus vandervechti.

Publications Van der Vecht was a prolific author of papers and a full bibliography is set out in his obituary by C. van Achterberg which was published in Zoologische Mededelingen in 1992. A selection of some of the more notable are set out below: 1926 Nieuwe naamlijst van de in Nederland voorkomende soorten van het geslacht Andrena. (Hymenoptera, Apidae). Zool. Med. Leiden 9:300–304. 1930. with S. Leefmans De roodgeringde mangga-rups, Noorda albizonalis Hamps. Korte Meded. Inst. Plantenz. Buitenzorg 14:1–8. 1931 De stand van het onderzoek der peper-insecten in Nederlandsch Indie. Landbouw 6:820–828. 1933 De groote peperwants of semoenjoeng, Dasynus piperis China Dissertation Rijksuniversiteit Leiden: 1–101. 1936 Some notes on the life-history of Apoderus clavatus Pasc. (Col., Curculionidae). Ent. Meded. Ned.-Indie 2:9–12. 1947 [The study of the insect fauna of the East Indian Archipelago]. Verslag 101 ste Zomerverg. Ned. ent. Ver.: x–xiii. Reprinted in Tijdschr. Ent. 89 (1948): xlii–xlv. 1948 Entomologie in de U.S.A.— Verslag 79de Winterverg. Ned. ent. Ver.: xiii–xv. Reprinted in Tijdschr. Ent. 90 (1949): xiii–xv. 1950 Population studies on the Coconut Leaf Moth Artona catoxantha Hamps. (Lep., Zyg.). Proc. 8th int. Congr. Entomology: 702–715. 1952 (with F.H. Schmidt). East monsoon fluctuations in Java and Madura during the period 1880–1940. Verh. Metereol. Magn. Inst. Djakarta 43:1–36. 1953 The Xylocopa species of Celebes. Idea 9:57–69 1953 The problem of the mentek disease of rice in Java. Contr. gen. agric. Res. Stn Bogor 137:1–88. 1954 Agricultural Entomology in Indonesia, 1939–1948. Proc. 7th Pac. Sc. Congr. 4:100–108 1972 Palaearctic Eumenidae Hymenopterorum catalogus Volume 8 of Hymenopterorum catalogus. Nova editio Dr. W. Junk, 199pp 1990. (with J.M. Carpenter). A catalogue of the genera of the Vespidae (Hymenoptera). Zool. Verh. Leiden 260:1–62. 1991 (with J.M. Carpenter). A study of the Vespidae described by William J. Fox (Insecta: Hymenoptera), with assessment of taxonomic implications. Ann. Carnegie Mus. 60:211-24.