Poey

Felipe Poey y Aloy

b. La Habana, Cuba, 26 May 1799; d. La Habana, 28 January 1891

Poey studied at Paris and Madrid and became a lawyer in 1822. Had to flee Spain because of his liberal ideas and in 1926 went to France where he supplied Cuvier and Valenciennes with fish specimens from Cuba. He also wrote poetry. Returned to Cuba where he became the founder of the National Academy of Medicine and the first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the Universidad de La Habana. He wrote Ictiología Cubana, a 20-volume work on the fishes of Cuba.

After hearing the first tales of troglomorphic fishes in Cuba that dated back to 1831, Poey secured the specimens and described two new species: Lucifuga subterraneus and Lucifuga dentatus (= Stygicola dentatus) (Poey 1858, 2:100). The descriptions of these two species were extraordinary on several accounts. Not only were they very detailed and precise from the external and internal anatomical viewpoints, but there was also a wealth of information on their behavior, habitat and history. Further, based on specimens he received from the United States, he described A. spelaea, for comparative purposes. The descriptions of the Cuban species were far superior to those published on A. spelaea by his American and European counterparts. Poey also demonstrated full familiarity with the published literature on cave fishes up to that time.

Lucifuga subterraneus

Lucifuga dentatus

It would be easy to label Poey as an ‘isolated genius’ (sensu Beddall 1983) from social, scientific, and geographic viewpoints. He lived in a country which, at that time, was still a colony of Spain and lacked strong academic institutions. Poey himself was the founder of the first Cuban natural history museum and the first who taught zoology at the University of Havana. Yet he was not isolated from the scientific community. Poey was in contact with the most prominent contemporary researchers of cave fishes including Girard, Gill, Packard, and Putnam. The latter visited Poey in Cuba in 1886 (Cockerell 1920). He received specimens of A. spelaea which he examined for his comparative studies adding information and making corrections to previous observations (Poey 1858, 2:104-106). He also provided American institutions such as the Museum of Comparative Zoology with specimens of the Cuban hypogean fish (Putnam 1872).