Gerlof Fokko Mees

Who is Gerlof Fokko Mees?

Dr Gerlof Fokko Mees was a Dutch ichthyologist, ornithologist and museum curator. During 1946 to 1949 he took part as a conscript in the military actions to reestablish rule in the Dutch East Indies. During that time he became interested in the avian family Zosteropidae, comprising the white-eyes.

Mees was born at Velsen in the Netherlands. He attended the University of Leiden where he studied biology, obtaining his doctorate in 1956. He was an assistant at the department birds of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden from May 1955 to June 1957. Thereafter he became Curator of Vertebrates at the Western Australian Museum from 1958 to 1963. He subsequently went back to the Netherlands to become Curator of Birds at the Rijksmuseum in Leiden until his retirement, for which he returned to Western Australia in 1991, and lived in Perth and Northcliffe. He died at Busselton, Western Australia.

He gave the first description of the unusual fish species, the Salamander fish of Western Australia.

Mees's Nightjar, the proposed name for new species Caprimulgus meesi, is named for this researcher.