He was survived by his two daughters, their husbands and his grandchildren. Mauriès was born Jean-Paul Mauriès-Belou in Albi, Tarn, on 1 December 1934. He became a biology student at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Toulouse, where his natural-sciences studies covered geology, zoology and botany from 1953 to 1956.

He served in the military from 1960 to 1962, partly in Algeria. During the same period, he was an assistant researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, or CNRS, where he worked from 1957 to 1966. His research interests increasingly centered on myriapod biology and systematics, particularly millipede taxonomy and distribution in the Pyrenean region.

In 1966, Mauriès moved to Paris and became an assistant researcher in the Zoology-Arthropods Laboratory at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, then directed by Professor Max Vachon. He advanced through the museum’s academic hierarchy, attaining the rank of Maître-Assistant, second class, in 1974; Maître-Assistant, first class, in 1979; and Maître de Conférences Universitaire in 1986. He remained at the institution until the end of his career and continued there as an honorary researcher after retirement.

His work in millipede systematics included original descriptions of numerous species, genera and families, and he became one of the principal international specialists on the millipede order Chordeumatida. For many years, Mauriès was an active curator of the museum’s “Myriapodes et Onychophores” collection. He gave considerable time to enriching the collection, managing it and keeping its scientific information current, and he continued to do so after becoming an honorary researcher.

The collection formed part of the museum’s holdings of myriapods and onychophores, while the taxonomic studies for which Mauriès was best known involved millipedes. His curatorial work was therefore closely connected to his continuing activity as a researcher and to the maintenance of the museum’s scientific collections. In 1968, he joined Professor Jean-Marie Demange of the Paris museum and Professor Otto Kraus of Hamburg in founding the Centre International de Myriapodologie, now called the International Society for Myriapodology.

The society has attracted researchers from different countries and supported the study of myriapods worldwide. Working with Monique Nguyen Duy-Jacquemin and Jean-Jacques Geoffroy, Mauriès contributed to its permanent secretariat, the publication of its bulletin and the organization of international myriapodology congresses held every three years. He attended many international congresses of myriapodology and helped organize the first and ninth congresses in Paris.

At the end of his research career, he was elected an honorary member of the society. After Jean-Marie Demange retired, Mauriès also contributed to the annual Muséum course on venomous and poisonous animals, specifically its treatment of millipedes and centipedes. He published several papers on these subjects in books concerning the function of venom.

Mauriès’s taxonomic research covered France and several European countries and regions, including Switzerland, the Balkan and Iberian peninsulas and Corsica. It also extended to North Africa, Western Africa, the Indo-Pacific, the Caribbean region, French Guiana, Brazil, Venezuela, China and Southeast Asia. Most of his publications concerned edaphic millipedes inhabiting different environments.

A major part of his work dealt with taxa with restricted distributions that were highly adapted to extreme habitats, including high mountains and, most frequently, deep subterranean systems such as caves and MSS. He contributed to subterranean biology through review articles on troglobic myriapods published in the “Mémoires de Biospéologie,” the “Encyclopaedia Biospeologica” and the “Encyclopaedia of Cave and Karst Science.” The reviews described cave-associated species with considerable heritage and paleobiogeographic interest, and the obituary states that some of these species merited protection and conservation measures.

Mauriès’s species descriptions were often accompanied by his own hand-drawn illustrations, which the obituary identifies as evidence of his scientific drawing talent. These drawings formed part of the rigorous descriptions he prepared for millipede taxa. Mauriès maintained strong professional and personal links with his native region of Toulouse.

He published many major taxonomic papers in the “Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire Naturelle de Toulouse.” He was also an active member of the Société de Biogéographie, Société Zoologique de France, Société Française de Systématique, Société Française d’Écologie and the Société Internationale de Biospéologie, also known as the International Society for Subterranean Biology. He held various responsibilities in those organizations, served for a time as temporary head of the museum’s Zoology-Arthropods Laboratory and was elected to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle’s Board of Directors. Even during his final illness, when he was unable to continue his laboratory and research work, Mauriès received satisfaction from studies that were then in press and from the expected discovery of a cave-dwelling species new to France.

A paper by European colleagues recognized his work by establishing the chordeumatidan genus Maurieseuma Antic, Spelda, 2022 in his honor. He left behind a large quantity of unpublished documents, including study files on diplopods from Cameroon and French Guiana and, above all, on Chordeumatida.

Subject of Research: Obituary of Jean-Paul Mauriès documenting his research on millipede systematics, collections and subterranean biology.

Article Title: In Memoriam – Jean-Paul Mauriès

Article References: Geoffroy, J.-J. (2023). In Memoriam – Jean-Paul Mauriès. Subterranean Biology, 46, 87-96. https://doi.org/10.3897/subtbiol.46.113328

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/subtbiol.46.113328

Keywords: Jean-Paul Mauriès, millipedes, myriapodology, biospeleology, taxonomy, systematics, cave fauna, Chordeumatida, scientific collections, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Memoriam, Jean-Paul