Johann Hochhuth and his collection of silken-fungus beetles (Coleoptera: Cryptophagidae): significance and unique specimens

Johann Hochhuth and his collection of silken-fungus beetles (Coleoptera: Cryptophagidae): significance and unique specimens. — K. Ocheretna. — Johann Hochhuth was one of the most significant amateur collectors and naturalists of the 19th century in Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe. His collection of Coleoptera has an immense amount of scientific material which is actual even nowadays. Cryptophagidae in Johann Hochhuth’s collection is only a small but significant part of collection which can be used as a comparative material for newer gatherings. The author provides some historical facts about the collector and a detailed description of his silken-fungus beetles collection. This collection consists of 214 Cryptophagidae specimens belonging to 50 species of the family. The author also revised all of the specimens, clarified the identification of the species, updated the identification or species names if they weren't revised earlier, and indicated the most unique specimens of the collection. The collection includes only specimens from the territory of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, and some specimens collected by other collectors, such as Wilhelm Rosengauer (Austria and Germany), Christian Suffrian (Germany), Ernst von Ballion (Russia), Oleksandr Czekanowski (Ukraine) and others. The collection is undoubtedly important for the study of morphological pecularities of some rare species of the Cryptophagidae family compared to recently collected specimens. The accumulation of the information about the silken-fungus beetle fauna of Ukraine will make it possible to generalise the list of species in the studied region. This entomological collection is part of the history of the formation of modern large zoological collections through the difficult path from J. H. Hochhuth’s collection, the part of M. Cherkunov’s collection, the natural history collections of the Ped-agogical Museum of Kyiv to the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, NAS of Ukraine. Its materials are a complete composition of Cryptophagidae species that were collected in the territory of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast in the middle of the 19th century. This article also contains important biographical information on Johann Heinrich Hochhuth’s life, education, and scientific achievements.


Introduction
Scientists and naturalists of the 19th and early 20th centuries were a special community of people who are often unrelated to any educational or scientific institution, such as universities or high schools, as one of the few centres of prosperity of scientific thought. Even though most naturalists were not professional zoologists, their contribution to the scientific research is often expressive. It should also be noted that a large number of natural collections, including entomological collections deposited in natural history museums of the world, were collected by amateur scientists who did not have titles or positions, but with great enthusiasm engaged in scientific research (Ocheretna, 2019 c). These statements can be applied to the weighty figure of Kyiv of the 19th century -Johann Heinrich Hochhuth, a botanist-gardener with extreme attraction to work with entomological material and to collect beetles.
Entomological and other zoological collections of natural history museums allow contemporary researchers to obtain a wide range of information about the species of interest, the historical range of the species, the comparison of the structural features, etc. (Suarez, Tsutsui, 2004). Old museum collections are valued not only by entomologists (Ocheretna, 2019 b) but also biologists of other specialties, including ichthyologists, palaeontologists (Reznick et al., 1994), and archaeozoologists (Hamilton-Dyer, 2013).
The study is processing data on the collected specimens of the Cryptophagidae family, which are part of J. H. Hochhuth's collection stored in the National Museum of Natural History, NAS of Ukraine, Kyiv. The author of the article worked on biographical information about the collection's author, as well as all the specimens, and also clarified the identification of the specimens.

Biographical information on Johann Hochhuth
Until recently, information about the researcher was rather incomplete, including absence of it even in B. Mazurmovych's monograph on the milestones of the historical development of zoology in Ukraine (1972), but in 2015 Johann Hochhuth's great-granddaughter published a book containing great deal of information about the researcher's life and work (Hochhuth, 2015). There is also a small essay on J. Hochhuth in the 2012 review on the history of the study of invertebrates in Volhynia (Ivantsiv, Ivantsiv, 2012).
Johann Heinrich Hochhuth (1810-1872) was a talented botanist who made considerable efforts to create the Botanical Garden in Kyiv at St. Volodymyr University (now Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv), and also an entomologist whose collections of beetles of the Kyiv region are stored in the National Museum of Natural History, NAS of Ukraine (Kyiv). His scientific articles, devoted mainly to separate families of the Coleoptera, are still used by modern scientists (Fig. 1).
Nowadays we have a slightly different understanding of the term "gardener" of botanical gardens; earlier, it had to be a person with higher education, with knowledge of the basics of agronomy, breeding and a wide range of knowledge in botany in general. Johann Hochhuth was a scientist having exactly those qualities. He was also a gardener of the Botanical Garden and an entomologist who studied and described beetles of the families Staphylinidae and Curculionidae, and wrote articles on general economic topics in Kyiv journals and newspapers, and taught German at the Second Kyiv Gymnasium (Hochhuth, 2015). Johann Heinrich was born in 1811 in Kassel city on the Fulda River (Land of Hessesen). After graduating from high school in his hometown, he studied in Vienna. It should be noted that he studied first at the Faculty of Medicine, and then (due to dislike of the anatomy classes) transferred to the Faculty of Biology at the University of Vienna and Tartu (then Derpt). His future mentor, Rudolf Trautfetter, also did the same dropping medicine and diving headlong into botanical science. Johann Hochhuth was interested in botany, entomology, and taxidermy all his life. Some old skin-mounts made by Johann Heinrich are still probably stored at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Hochhut, 2015). In 1834, he started to work in Kremenets upon Wilibald Besser's invitation, who was director of the Botanical Garden founded in 1806 at the Kremenets Lyceum.
Two years later, in 1836, after A. L. Andrzejewski's report to the University Council, he requested to provide a job of a gardener and, in conjunction, a taxidermist for Johann Heinrich. Thus, Hochhuth came to Kyiv for the first time, where he was dispatched from Kremenets to St. Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv. In 1839, he moved to Kyiv permanently and lived there for the rest of his life.
In Kyiv, together with Rudolf Trautfetter, Hochhuth developed the Botanical Garden, wrote his finest faunistic works on different groups of beetles, and also kept his collections (Hochhut, 2015).
During his visit to Kyiv, with the permission of the guardian of the Kyiv Educational District, Johann Heinrich brought to St. Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv 132 skin-mounts: 108 handstuffed skin-mounts transferred from Hamburg and Vienna, as well as 24 skin-mounts of local species and a bird skeleton.
Johann Heinrich Hochhuth was a member of the Provincial Commission of the Kyiv Educational District (ibid.) and worked in the Botanical Garden of Kyiv University for a long time. In 1850, he was awarded the Gold Medal "For diligent service" (after Nicholas I visited the Botanical Garden in September 1849). During the period of 1849-1873, he published a number of scientific papers, in particular concerning the insect fauna of Ukraine (Hochhuth, 1871, 1872 a-b, 1873).
Entomology was greatly admired by Hochhuth despite his work at the Botanical Garden. He described 60 new species and three new genera of weevils (Hochhuth, 1851 a), and was also interested in the group Staphylinidae (Hochhuth, 1849;1851 b). He amassed a collection of 485 species of Curculionidae of the Kyiv region (Cherkunov, 1889); three species of this family are named after him: Otiorhynchus hochhuthi Marseul, 1872, Melanobaris hochhuthi Faust, 1882, and Phyllobius hochhuthi Faust, 1883. Together with the entomologist Baron Maximilien de Chaudoir, he prepared several scientific works, including a monograph on the beetles of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia (Chaudoir, Hochhuth, 1846), which remains relevant today, and a later article (Hochhuth, 1847).

Overview of the Coleoptera collection
Johann Heinrich Hochhuth's collection of beetles of the Kyiv region is one of the largest entomological collections (3031 species) described by Mykola Cherkunov (1889). Cherkunov's review contains only a list of beetle names from the collections gathered by J. Hochhuth and Schirmer. Cherkunov's collections, including J. Hochhut's materials, were later transferred to the Pedagogical Museum of Kyiv, and eventually to the National Museum of Natural History, NAS of Ukraine, where they are still preserved as a separate assembly (Zagorodniuk, 2016). Hochhuth's collection of 17 285 specimens is catalogued and listed in a database (O. Martynov, pers. comm.), most of the specimens are stored under the original label names. This collection also contains beetles of the Cryptophagidae family, which are the subject of research by the author of this publication. Therefore, they are given special attention.
There are no details regarding the history of this collection, but it can be assumed that the specimens are stored exactly as they were assembled and defined by J. Hochhuth. Some changes might been made later, but considering the names used, this was before M. Cherkunov's review (1889).
This collection of Cryptophagidae (Tab. 1) was not described before, although some information about its volume was already published (Ocheretna, 2019 a). The history of this collection originates from the entomological collections of the Pedagogical Museum in Kyiv (Zagorodniuk, 2016), collected by various scientists, including J. Hochhuth (1871) and ordered and described by M. Cherkunov (1889).
1 Schirmer was as amateur as J. Hochhuth. According to M. Bilyashivsky, he was a taxidermist at St. Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv at the times of K. Kessler.