Rolande Roux-Estève

Rolande Roux-Estève (10 October 1921 – 6 July 2009 in Levallois-Perret, Département Hauts-de-Seine) was a French herpetologist and ichthyologist. She began her career with the study of fish, but during her time in the Congo began studying African blind snakes (typhlopidae).

Biography Roux-Estève was born in Toulouse on 10 October 1921; her father worked as a mathematician at the university there. Rolande graduated from the University of Toulouse with her bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1939.

In November 1942, she took a position at the National Museum of Natural History, France in Paris. Roux-Estève was working mainly with fish, including those collected in the Red Sea during expeditions of the research vessel Calypso led by Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

She named new taxa, including Letheobia (formerly Rhinotyphlops) wittei (Roux-Estève, 1974) from Zaire, Madatyphlops (formerly Typhlops) domerguei (Roux-Estève, 1980) from Madagascar, the blind snake species Myriopholis (formerly Leptotyphlops) perreti (Roux-Estève, 1979) from Cameroon, the adder species Philothamnus hughesi Trape & Roux-Estève, 1990 from Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, South Sudan and Uganda, the African blind snake genus Rhinoleptus Orejas-Miranda, Roux-Estève & Guibé, 1970 and the skink species Melanoseps loveridgei Brygoo & Roux-Estève, 1982 from Tanzania,

She was invited to join a select group of academics to help form a new professional association in 1979, the Society of European Herpetologists. She was a representative of France for the initial group.

Dedication names Anodonthyla rouxae, a climbing frog, named after Roux-Estève, that is endemic to Madagascar. The double creeper species Cynisca rouxae The blind snake species Afrotyphlops rouxestevae Trape, 2019 The worm snake Myriopholis rouxestevae Trape & Mané, 2004

Selected publications Bertin, Léon and Rolande Roux-Estève. "Catalogue des types de poissons du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle." (1939). Roux-Estève, Rolande. Révision systématique des Typhlopidae d'Afrique Reptilia-Serpentes. Éditions du Muséum, 1974. Trape, Jean-François, and Rolande Roux-Estève. "Les serpents du Congo: liste commentée et clé de détermination." Journal of African Zoology 109, no. 1 (1995): 31–50.