Genus Decorsea

For Gaston-Jules Decorse (1873–1907), a French army physician with an interest in ethnography and linguistics. He qualified with an MD from the University of Paris in 1898. From 1898–1902 he collected plants, insects and fossils in Madagascar for the Natural History Museum in Paris. He joined a French expedition to Chad in 1902–1904 and explored parts of Tunisia and Sudan in 1905. Arising from these explorations he wrote Rabah et les arabes du Chari: documents arabes et vocabulaire (1905) with Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes, followed by his book Du Congo au Lac Tchad la brousse telle qu’elle est, les gens tels qu’ils sont : carnet de route (From Congo to Lake Chad, the Bush as it is, People as they are) (1906). Decorse collected a wide range of specimens from terrestrial molluscs to snakes such as the holotype of the snake Typhlops decorsei. Four reptiles were named after him.