Vitaliyi Cheslavovich Dorogostaisky: A Pioneer Investigator of the Flora and Fauna of Lake Baikal

V. Ch. Dorogostaisky was born in Irkutsk Province, and devoted much of his professional work to the study of Lake Baikal, Siberia, and its surrounding region. His studies spanned the first third of the 20th Century, beginning at the time when only isolated investigations of the lake were made. He organized and contributed to the shift toward systematic, sustained studies conducted by groups of specialists. His own contributions included both basic and applied efforts. Although he collected algae and vascular plants and described new species, Dorogostaisky devoted his principal attention in limnology to invertebrates and fish. He appears to have grasped the fundamentals of fish management and fur farming well ahead of the development of the technology. His most noteworthy contribution to basic science was his realization that the ecological speciation among the gammarids and fish of Baikal was a recent phenomenon. At a time when the very origin and antiquity of the lake itself was not known, he essentially documented adaptive radiation. Dorogostaisky's evidence impressed Cockrell (1927) to parallel Baikal's faunistic evolution with that of the Hawaiian Islands.