Ludovico Di Caporiacco

Count Di Caporiacco traces back his family pedigree to Thirteenth century noblemen of the Friuli region, Italy.  He obtained his degree in Natural Sciences in 1920, taught Zoology and Comparative Anatomy since 1929.  In 1943 became Professor of Zoology at the Faculty of Science at the University of Parma.  He participated in the Captain Oreste Marchesi Expedition to the Gebel Uweinat, a mountain massif in the boundary between Sudan, Lybia, and Egypt.  There, together with the Hungarian explorer Count Almasy, he discovered the Ain Doua paintings in 1933.

Involvement in Hypogean Fish Research

He published about 100 papers on many different animal taxa, including fishes (Colosi b/d).  He published two papers on cave fishes including the description of Barbopsis devecchii (Di Caporiacco 1926).  The original description was based on 19 specimens collected in a well by two local doctors, G. Stefanini and N. Puccioni in the spring of 1925 (Di Caporiacco 1927).  Because of variability in eye reduction, specimens of this species have been mistakenly assigned to several genera and species.

(I thank Alessandro Menardi for providing me with biographical information about this scientist).