Russian Diplomat and Entomologist Robert Romanovich (Carl Robert) Osten-Sacken and His Role in the Studies of North American Insects

This paper analyzes a fruitful scientific collaboration between a Russian diplomat and entomologist, Carl Robert Osten-Sacken, and a German dipterist Friedrich Hermann Loew, who laid the foundation for the studies on North American Diptera. In particular, it provides information about three collections of insects, made by Osten-Sacken: the main collection of North American Diptera with type specimens of the species described by Loew and Osten-Sacken himself, which was left in the USA and is now permanently deposited at the Louis Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology (Harvard University); a collection of the most common North American insects that was presented by Osten-Sacken to the Museum of Natural History (NYC), and a small collection of European Diptera, hosted at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Other aspects of Osten-Sacken’s entomological studies are also analyzed, particularly his proposals for the chaetotaxy of Dipteran and for the order’s taxonomy, and his biographical book, “Record of My Life Work in Entomology”, is reviewed.