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Dr. Johannes H.M. Lourens

Curriculum vitae

Ridgewood Park, Brgy. Gulang-Gulang,
Lucena City 4301, Quezon Province
The Philippines
e-Email: janhlourens@yahoo.com
Tel.: +63 42 7970794

Can best be characterized as a polyvalent autodidact biologist with broad interest in phylogeny, co-evolution, biological pest control and devoted to Nature- preservation and -education.

Born in 1941 at Amsterdam, the Netherlands, he switched over from predestinated business studies to educational sciences and became overseas project coordinator for Entomology students at the University of Amsterdam, lecturing amongst others in field work population measurement statistics, in vitro- insect mass production, sterile male techniques in Tsetse flies etc. He always spent much time as Volunteer Nature Guide and Youth Nature Study Associations.

As working- student in Restaurant enterprise he financed his Biology Masters and physical biochemistry studies. From the age of 17 he built up a specimens collection of European butterflies and Netherlands Moths and Diptera. The latter, especially Tipulidae with and stimulated by Dr. Theowald van Leeuwen, who opened up his interest for Philosophy and global regional religious movements. He became fascinated by Applied Entomology such as African vector pests and worked on Aleyrodidae in cotton: IRCT in Chad, Ixodoidea as vectors of tick-borne cattle diseases for FAO in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda: made expeditions and collections of Cyprinidontidae (Pisces) for Malaria mosquito larvae control in West Africa, and sampled insects on most East African Mountains, resulting in several new specs. like: Tipula lourensi, Celaenorrhinus lourentis, and the Killifish species Nothobranchius lourensis.

Tick studies kept him focused for 10 years, culturing all African hard-tick species, establishing susceptibility standard reference values for chemical control agents and assessing their effectiveness and inheritance of enzyme based pesticide detoxifying resistance factors, responsible for control failures. His 1979 Ph.D. Thesis: “Inheritance of Organochlorine Resistance…” contributed to an eventual ban of these persistent and accumulative pesticides for veterinary use in Africa.

During a second (18 years) career phase, he joined a major multinational pesticide company as a pesticide-resistance coordinator and was sent to every location in the world where there were control-failures. In this position he developed IPM programs based upon bio-control by predators and entomo- pathogenic micro-organisms like Baculoviruses, Bacillus thueringiensis, Beauveria bassiana etc. and minimum dosages of chemical pesticides for adjusting out-of-control populations of pests and developed new, more predator selective chemicals. This brought him to the Philippines, where he ran a Rice Research Station for 8 years. During this time he visited every corner of the Philippines and devoted all his free-time to support biodiversity studies of especially butterflies and moths.

Only after his retirement and permanent resident ship in the Philippines in 2004 he started working on his material of a life-time accumulated large collection. Together with Dr. A. Schintlmeister the “Notodontidae of the Philippines” came out and similar issues on Noctuidae, Arctiidae are in the pipeline. Several sections of a revision of the Arctiid Genus Cyana have now been published and further ones scheduled. The completion thereof however, being largely dependent on support from several international specialized scientists. Close cooperation and transfer of specimens to taxonomic institutes for DNA bar coding offers promising opportunities that such issues may eventually come out and will become available to Philippine students, scientists and Environmental Protection Agencies.

His persistent efforts to issue a low-priced issue of “A Roadside Guide to Philippine Butterflies” (which he is working on) as a basic tool towards Nature admiration on elementary schools and for Eco-tourism, shows his ambition to contribute towards a responsible attitude for Nature Conservation, without which there will otherwise only Coconut- and Oil-Palm be left over in this Nature Biodiversity Paradise. Upon his skill and experience as ecologist and frequent visits to Forest remnants all over the Philippines, it is his estimate that between 200-240 species of Rhopalocera may already be considered extinct. (successive hobbies): athletics, hiking, motor racing, scuba diving, party cooking, jungle survival, entomo -expeditions, taxonomy, macro-photography and publishing.

List of scientific publications:

Lourens J.H. 1971. Range extension of the alien amphipod Gammarus tigrinus Sexton, 1939 in the Netherlands. Bull. Zool. Mus. Univ. Amsterdam. 2: 115-120.

Lourens J.H. & v.d. Laan P.A. & Brader L. 1972. Contributions a l’étude d’une mosaique du Cotonnier au Tchad. Transmission par Aleurodidae. Coton et Fibres Tropicales. 27(2): 225-230.

Lourens J.H.M. 1979. Susceptibility of a dieldrin resistant and a susceptible strain of the ticks Rhipicephalus evertsi Neumann from East Africa to carbamate and organophosphorus acaricides. Pesticide Science. 10: 495-501.

Lourens J.H.M. 1979. Genetic basis for organochlorine resistance of Amblyomma variegatum and information on the susceptibility of A. lepidum to organochlorine acaricides. Jl. Econ. Ent.. 72: 790-793.

Lourens J.H.M. & Lyaruu D.M. 1979. Susceptibility of some East African strains of Rhipicephalus appendiculatus Neumann, 1901 to cholinesterase inhibiting acaricides. PANS. 25(2): 135-142.

Lourens J.H.M. & Tatchel R.J. 1979. Studies on acaricide resistance in Rhipicephalus evertsi evertsi Neumann (Acarina: Ixodidae) in East Africa. Identification of a resistance factor to organo-chlorines. Bull. Ent. Res.. 69: 235-242.

Lourens J.H.M. & v.d. Klashorst G. 1979. Organochlorine susceptible and tolerant Populations of the brown ear tick Rhipicephalus appendiculatus Neumann in East Africa. Z. angew. Ent.. 87(3): 230-238.

Jongejan F. & Lourens J.H.M. 1980. Cross-resistance pattern to pyrethrum and synthetic pyrethroids in organochlorine resistant strains of R. appendiculatus Neumann, 1901. Z. angew. Ent.. 89: 321-323.

Lourens J.H.M. 1980. Inheritance of organochlorine resistance in the cattle tick Rhipicephalus appendiculatus Neumann (Acari: Ixodoida) in East Africa. Bull. Ent. Res.. 70: 1-10.

Lourens J.H.M. 1980. Susceptibility of organochlorine resistant Amblyomma variegatum (Fabricius, 1794) to ten cholinesterase inhibiting acaricides with baseline data for a related species A. lepidum Dönitz, 1909. Jl. Med. Ent.. 17: 375-379.

Lourens J.H. & Datud F. 1989. Endosulfan and deltamethrin susceptibility in the coffee berry borer Hypothenemus hampei (Ferr.) from the Philippines. Proc. 1st Asia-Pacific Conf. of Entom, Chiangmai, Thailand, Nov. 1989.

Lourens J.H. & Reyes T.M. 1989. Susceptibility of Plutella xylostella to Abamectin. Proc. 1st Asia-Pacific Conf. of Entom., Chiangmai, Thailand, Nov. 1989.

Drumont A. & Lourens J.H. 2007. Nouvelle contribution a l’étude du genre Ziglipton, avec la description de la femelle de Ziglipton marieae Komiya, 2003 (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae: Prioninae). Lambillionea. 107(369-373): 1.

Lourens J.H. & Zilli A. 2008. A new species of Artena from the Philippines (Insecta, Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). Aldrovandia. 4: 21-25.

Naumann S. & Lourens J.H. 2008. A new, unexpected species of the genus Antheaea Hübner, 1819 (“1816”) from Luzon Island, Philippines (Lepidoptera, Saturniidae). Nachr. entomol. Ver. Apollo, N.F . 29(1/2): 65-70.

Lourens J.H. 2009. A new species of Cyana from Northern Luzon (Philippines) belonging to the lunulata-group, with an analysis of differential features and evaluation of elements for group recognition (Lepidoptera, Arctiidae: Lithosiinae). Nachr. entomol. Ver. Apollo, N.F . 30(3): 147-160.

Lourens J.H. & Schintlmeister A. 2010. The Philippine Notodontidae (Lepidoptera). Quadrifina. 8: 1-349.

Lourens J.H. 2011. Six new Philippine species of the genus Cyana Walker, 1854 and a review of the geminipuncta-group, with emphasis on endemic development lines on various islands (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae, Lithosiinae). Nachr. entomol. Ver. Apollo, N.F. 32(1/2): 69-96.