Moritz Wagner

Moritz Wagner (Bayreuth, 3 October 1813 – Munich, 31 May 1887) was a German explorer, collector, geographer and natural historian. Wagner devoted three years (1836–1839) to the exploration of Algiers: it was here that he made important observations in natural history, which he later supplemented and developed: that geographical isolation could play a key role in speciation.

From 1852–1855, together with Carl Scherzer, Wagner travelled through North and Central America and the Caribbean. In May 1843, Wagner toured the Lake Sevan region of Armenia with Armenian writer Khachatur Abovian. He committed suicide in Munich, aged 73. His brother Rudolf was a physiologist and anatomist.

Wagner's early career was as a geographer, and he published a number of geographical books about North Africa, the Middle East, and Tropical America. He was also a keen naturalist and collector, and it is for this work he is best known among biologists. Ernst Mayr, the evolutionist and historian of biology, has given an account of Wagner's significance.^p562–565. However, others disagree with this account. During his three years in Algeria, he (amongst other activities) studied the flightless beetles Pimelia and Melasoma. In these genera, a number of species are each confined to a stretch of the north coast between rivers which descend from the Atlas mountains to the Mediterranean. As soon as one crosses a river, a different but closely related species appears.

Wagner made similar observations in the Caucasus and in the Andean valleys, leading him to conclude, after the Origin of Species had been published:

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