Filippo Silvestri


Filippo Silvestri was an Italian entomologist. He specialised in world Protura, Thysanura, Diplura and Isoptera, but also worked on Hymenoptera, Myriapoda and Italian Diptera. He is also noted for describing and naming the previously unknown order Zoraptera. In 1938 he was nominated to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the scientific academy of the Vatican.
Silvestri was born in Bevagna. A keen young naturalist, he became assistant to Giovanni Battista Grassi, Director of the Institute of Anatomical Research of the University of Rome. In 1904, Silvestri became Director of the Institute of Entomology and Zoology at the agricultural college in Portici, a position he held for 45 years.
He discovered polyembryony in the 1930s while working on Litomatix truncatellus Hymenoptera.
His collection is in the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Genova. Duplicates of Isoptera are
in the Swedish Museum of Natural History and a few Diplopoda types are in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Filippo Sivestri has been commemorated in the names of the following: a square in his home town, Bevagna; a high school in Portici, the town where he worked and died; and a street in Rome.
A species of South American worm lizard, Amphisbaena silvestrii is named in his honor.
Publications on termites.
Translated from Wikipedia France