A corner of the invertebrate storehouse of the Beijing Museum of Natural History
In the herbarium of the Beijing Museum of Natural History, a number of precious crab specimens have been preserved, with a total of more than 400 species, which are spread throughout the coastal areas of China. This series of marine crab population specimens has laid a solid foundation for the collection of invertebrate specimens in the Beijing Natural History Museum, and provided reliable information and evidence for crab taxonomy research. This batch of crab specimens with great collection and research value was collected by a scientist for nearly thirty years, one by one, in fact, in addition to crab specimens, a large number of invertebrate specimens from the Beijing Natural History Museum were also collected by him. This scientist is Mr. Yang Siyi, a famous Chinese crab taxonomist and researcher at the Beijing Museum of Natural History. "The New Language of the World" says, "Holding a crab claw in one hand, holding a wine glass in the other, and patting the floating wine pool, it is enough for a lifetime." It is about how intoxicating the taste of crab and wine is, and for Mr. Yang Siyu, who has devoted his half life to researching crabs and has achieved great results, it can also be described as another way of "holding a crab for a lifetime".
The crab specimens collected and identified by Yang Siyu in the collection of the Beijing Museum of Natural History are, from top to bottom, the bare-handed slippery crab, the wide-body big-eyed crab, the wide-body big-eyed crab, the bare-palmed shield crab, the hair-footed land crab, the flat-palmed sand crab, the Japanese big-eyed crab, and the Japanese flat-eyed crab. Courtesy of Beijing Museum of Natural History
Yang Siyu was born on April 2, 1941, to a well-off family on Cangqian Shanling Road in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. His father, Yang Shuqi, graduated from Shanghai Guanghua University and served as the secretary of the provincial government, and later served in the provincial tax bureau, the Taijiang District Trade General Store, and the steamship transportation company. Although Yang Siyu's mother, Xu Yaohua, was a housewife, she also received 3 years of private school education. Yang Siyu brothers and sisters 8 people, the eldest brother and sister two sisters were all holding teaching positions at that time, and later Yang Siyu and the other two brothers were also engaged in teaching and research work, and the influence of the family made him cultivate a serious, dedicated, studious and enterprising character from an early age. In 1953, Yang Siyu graduated from primary school and was admitted to the Affiliated Middle School of Fujian Normal College, and after graduating from junior high school in 1956, he was escorted to Fuzhou Senior High School. In 1959, he was admitted to the Department of Biology of Peking University, majoring in animal and genetic cytology.
Yang Siyi in high school Courtesy of the Beijing Museum of Natural History
After six years of university studies, Yang Siyu graduated in 1965 and was assigned to work in the Animal Research Laboratory of the Beijing Museum of Natural History. According to museum practice, new college students need to go through a 1-2 year experience in the position of docent. As an honor student graduated from Peking University, Yang Siyu, who has just entered the museum, can be described as a conscientious and responsible and dedicated docent in his position as a docent. During the day, he will stay in the exhibition hall, even if there are only three or four audiences, he also takes the initiative to explain, so as to increase his understanding of the exhibition hall; at night, in response to the questions raised by the daytime audience, Yang Siyu actively consults relevant materials. For his experience as a docent, Yang Siyu's understanding is: "Working diligently and being honest is the foundation of one's life." As long as you invest in people, there will always be gains. The two years of docent career have been very rewarding: it has made me aware of the needs of the audience, the work of the Natural History Museum, revisited many professional courses, and laid a solid ideological and social foundation for future work. ”
Around 1973, the museum leaders entrusted Yang Siyu with the exhibition design of the invertebrate part, the collection of related specimens and scientific research tasks. Yang Siyu realized that this was a good opportunity to combine his undergraduate major with the museum display business. The exhibition design of the Natural Museum and the collection of animal specimens were deeply considered, and the exhibition was completed in 1975, which was well received by the teaching unit and became the first answer sheet handed over by Yang Siyu after graduating from university. What lay ahead to Yang siyu was an even more difficult task — to establish the invertebrate herbarium at the Beijing Museum of Natural History as soon as possible. As the first natural museum built after the founding of the People's Republic of China, although the Beijing Museum of Natural History actually has the nature of a national natural museum because of its special geographical location and the historical background of its birth, due to the lack of historical accumulation, the specimen collection has a poor foundation and a small number, especially the collection of invertebrate specimens. At the beginning of the museum, the invertebrate specimens were almost blank.
Third from the right: Yang Siyu First from the left: Sun Xiumin
In the Spring Festival of 1976, the Xisha Islands collection team of the Beijing Museum of Natural History set foot on the virgin land in the South China Sea to collect a batch of specimens of animals and plants in the South China Sea to enrich the collection. The collection team consisted of four experts in invertebrates, birds, algae and fish, including Mr. Yang Siyi. He was delighted by the rich and diverse marine life in the intertidal zone, and for more than three months in a row, he led his assistant Sun Xiumin to collect organisms and sort out specimens every day. During the day, they tied the plastic buckets containing the specimens to the lifebuoys, and then tied them to the body, so they soaked in the sea for 8 or 9 hours in a row and collected specimens with two hands; at night, the specimens were processed and classified in time, and they had to complete the collection records, labels and other work, and were busy until late at night. Once when they went to sea to collect specimens, the weather suddenly changed, the sea wind and waves were strong, Yang Si forgave that the small boat they were riding in was trapped, and finally they were able to get out of danger by relying on the big boat passing by. Teacher Sun Xiumin recalled: "The motor of the big boat is at the stern, and our small boat is also tied to the stern, which is upside down for us along the way, it is simply too painful!" But the good guys were back on shore. A few months later, the expedition team finally returned with more than 80 boxes of nearly 20,000 specimens, and the fruitful results laid the first cornerstone for the establishment of the invertebrate herbarium and prompted Yang Siyu to choose his research topic.
In 1976, the invertebrate specimens collected by Yang Siyu of xisha science were, from top to bottom, the horseshoe snail, the rare pen snail, the staghorn coral, the water type snail, the leopard spotted sea cucumber, the broad wart fan crab, and the grain skin starfish. Courtesy of Beijing Museum of Natural History
After the Xisha inspection, Yang Siyu accepted the invitation of Mr. Dai Aiyun, a crustacean expert at the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to cooperate in the systematic research of marine crabs. On the basis of the study of Xisha crab specimens, Mr. Yang Siyu has published research results such as "Research on Crabs in the Xisha Islands - Apical Species", "New Records of New Species of Cotton Crab Family", "Research on Chinese Sand Crab Genus (Crustaceae: Full and Full)" and other professional journals in professional journals such as "Journal of Zoology", "Journal of Animal Taxonomy", "Research Report of Beijing Museum of Natural History" and other professional journals. His article "The Significance of Gastric Mill Structure in crab taxonomic research (Crustaceans: Crooked Tail School)", which created and advocated the view of "taking gastric mill structure as a new crab taxonomic trait", has attracted the attention and use of domestic and foreign counterparts. These studies enabled him to clarify the current situation and trends of the discipline at home and abroad, form his own independent opinions, and compare and systematically learn about crustaceans, on the basis of which Yang Siyu became an important expert in marine crabs in China.
In the next 20 years, Yang Siyu traveled almost all over the Beilun River estuary at the junction of China and Vietnam, and to the sea areas along the Yalu River at the junction of China and North Korea in the north, collecting tens of thousands of specimens for the Beijing Museum of Natural History, and collecting many foreign specimens. Among them, the number of marine crabs, porcelain crabs, oral foot and marine shellfish specimens ranks among the top in China, including many precious model specimens, and the collection of invertebrate specimens of the Beijing Museum of Natural History has been quite large.
1-2 sun strong crab 3-4 red-spotted strong crab 5-6 ridge strong crab
Under the limited conditions of backward technology and equipment and lack of accumulation of literature, Yang Siyi and his assistants spent all day in the specimen operation room to do classification research. For more than two decades, they observed specimens under the anatomical microscope almost every day, drew images, looked through literature and compared them with related types of texts and pictures one by one, identified types, and made scientific descriptions and records by comparing judgments. Assistant Sun Xiumin talked about the memory of Mr. Yang Siyu and said: "He just sits there every day, and he can look at the microscope for a day... There's really nothing to say, he's just a very serious person, doing everything very seriously. ”
Yang Si forgives work photos
After more than 20 years of hard work, Yang Siyu has achieved gratifying results. He has published about 50 papers in domestic and foreign journals in cooperation with his peers, discovered more than 40 new species, set more than 100 new domestic records, and preliminarily clarified the status of marine crab fauna in China. In 1985, he cooperated with Sun Xiumin, Liu Sikong and Wang Shizhang to translate and publish the book "Arthropod Biology", which is about 200,000 words; in 2986, he cooperated with Dai Aiyun, Song Yuzhi and Chen Guoxiao to compile and publish a 760,000-word monograph on "Chinese Marine Crabs", which has not only become a classic for the classification and research of marine crabs in China, but also an indispensable reference for the study of marine crab fauna in East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia; in 2009, the "Zoology of Hebei" co-authored with Song Daxiang. Crustaceans were published by Hebei Science and Technology Publishing House; in 2011, the 49th volume of Zoological Records of China was published, and the general part of the book summarized the research history, morphological characteristics, ecological environment, geographical distribution and economic significance of pike crab family, and the sub-theory part systematically described 120 species in 6 subfamilies and 16 genera of Pike crab family in China, including the morphological characteristics, ecological environment, geographical distribution, etc., and attached to the morphological characteristics illustrations, geographical distribution maps and search tables of taxonomic units at all levels; he also participated in the compilation of the "Pike crab family" The Red Book of Endangered Animals of China" crab part, "Encyclopedia of China" and other work.
Image source: Confucius Old Book Network
In addition to focusing on scientific research, Yang Siyu is also actively involved in the science education of invertebrates, and he has published a number of popular science articles in Nature, introducing the classification, distribution, and interesting structural characteristics and social behaviors of shrimp, crabs, shellfish and other animals. Yang Siyu and Dai Aiyun co-authored the book "Rampaging General Crab", which introduces the characteristics and uses of crab organs, the behavior characteristics of crabs, the mating and reproduction of crabs, etc. in easy-to-understand language, and introduces the crab family members such as "Swimming Master Pike Crab", "Colorful Fan Crab", "Interesting Little Bean Crab", "Crab That Fights Mud Holes and Drills Tree Holes" and other crab family members with interesting titles. In 1988, this small book was published as one of the "Animal World" series of Hunan Children's Publishing House. Together with the experts who have written other volumes, Yang Siyu has provided children with a set of classic animal science books that can stand the test of time with an extremely serious attitude.
Photo: Zheng Yu
In 1993, Yang Siyu won the second prize of the Natural Science Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for his research on marine crabs; in the same year, he won the first prize of the Natural Science Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for the comprehensive scientific expedition to the Nansha Islands and its adjacent sea areas; in 1995, he was awarded the title of National and Beijing Young and Middle-Aged Experts with Outstanding Contributions by the Ministry of Personnel and the Beijing Municipal People's Government, respectively. In addition to serving as the deputy director and director of the Invertebrate Research Office of the Beijing Museum of Natural History, the deputy director of the Beijing Museum of Natural History, and the director of the Academic Committee of the Beijing Museum of Natural History, Mr. Yang Is also a director of the Zoological Society of China, a director of the Crustacean Society of China, a vice chairman of the Zoological Society of Beijing, an editorial board member of the Journal of Animal Taxonomy, an editorial board member of Zoology of China, and a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. In 2003, he was hired by Yancheng Normal University as an adjunct professor in the Department of Biology.
Mr. Yang Siyu participated in the graduation defense of the Institute of Oceanography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a review expert Photo provided: Jiang Wei
On the labels of some crab specimens, there are identification records written by Mr. Yang Siyu in 2006. Sun Xiuling, the person in charge of the invertebrate warehouse, clearly remembers that she had just come to work in the museum at that time, and often met Mr. Yang Siyu who came to the museum to do crab classification and identification work. He once said in his personal summary, "I have experienced that only in-depth research can guide the exhibition, display and specimen collection." On the contrary, research work and scientific investigation should also focus on the exhibition, so that the research work of the natural museum can not deviate from the direction. ”
In 2014, Mr. Yang Siyu passed away. Today, he and his assistants have collected crab specimens from the wild quietly lined up on the shelves of the specimen storehouse of the Beijing Museum of Natural History. They record the arduous process of the older generation of scientists conscientiously accumulating "family foundations", and they are also silently looking forward to the future days to play a greater role in scientific research and science education in the field of invertebrates at the Beijing Museum of Natural History.
Crab specimen collected and identified by Mr. Yang Siyu in 2006 Photo: Zheng Yu
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