Nell Bevel Causey (1910 - 1979)

Dr Nell B. Causey, an American student of diplopods for over 30 years, died on 31 October, 1979 in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Born in Trenton, Tennessee, on 8 December, 1910, Dr Causey attented the College of the Ozarks in Clarcksville, Arkansas, where she received the Bachelor of Science degreee in 1931. Her graduate studies were conducted at the University of Arkansas, where she earned a Master of Arts degree in 1937, and at Duke University, where she was awarded the Ph. D. in 1940. Her doctoral dissertation Ecological and Systematic Studies on North Carolina Myriapods, was of the first regional studies on the fauna of the southeastern United States, and it launched a career that produced some 70 taxonomic and faunistic papers on millipeds. Additionaly, she published on Protozoa and aquatic plants, and was coauthor of a general zoology laboratory manual.

Dr Causey held faculty positions at the University of Arkansas and later at Louisiana State University, where she rose to the rank of full professor. Her teaching duties at LSU included a general zoology lecture - laboratory course and a seminar on the principles and methods of systematic zoology. She was a member of a number of scholastic, honorary, and professional societies, including Phi Beta Kappa, Society of the Sigma Xi, National Speological Society, Society for the Study of Evolution, Society of Systematic Zoology, American Association for the advancement of Science, American Society of Zoologists, and Louisiana Academy of Science.

Although her specialities were cave millipeds and the family Parajulidae, Dr Causey's taxonomist studies included nearly every order occuring in North America.She is the author of numerous species and genera and two families (Eurydesmidae and Sigmocheiridae) and her exhaustive bibliography is indispensable to students of the Nearctic fauna.

Over the years she amassed an enormous myriapod collection, now housed at the Florida State Collection of Arthropods in Gainesville. With material from the West Indies, Central and South America, and the United States, this collection is an invaluable archive of wealth of the western hemisphere. It will undoubtly yield a wealth of new information to future investigations.



Rowland M. Shelley, March 1980