Corresponding author: Florian Malard (
Academic editor: O. Moldovan
Malard F, Henry J-P, Douady CJ (2014) The scientific contribution of Guy Magniez (1935–2014). Subterranean Biology 13: 55–64. doi:
Guy Magniez was born on 23 August 1935 at Marey-sur-Tille, a small village in Côte-d’Or (France). He followed high school studies in Dijon and obtained his high school diploma in 1953. He was an elementary school teacher during one year before joining the University of Dijon where he passed a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences in 1958. In 1959, he involved in research at the Laboratory of Geology and obtained a Master degree by submitting a research report on the microfacies of crinoidal Bajocian limestones. Once he successfully passed the Aggregation for secondary education in Natural Sciences in 1960, he integrated the Research Laboratory of Animal and General Biology at the University of Dijon under the direction of Professor Husson. He began with the organization of practical classes for first-year students and a few years later he became responsible for organizing practical classes in general biology and genetics for bachelors. At this time, Guy was in charge of breeding fruit flies for teaching purpose in addition to breeding stenasellids for his research activity (see below). Then, he was offered a teaching assistantship and took the lead of the bachelor program in Natural Sciences. After submitting his state doctoral Thesis in 1976, he delivered lectures to under-graduate and graduate students. He became an associate professor in 1985 and was responsible for preparing graduate students to become teachers. Guy was an exceptional pedagogue: he supervised numerous master students (including the first author of this memorial) and led many students to go into teaching natural sciences. In addition to his heavy teaching duties, Guy also invested much time into social and administrative tasks at the University of Dijon. As a committed educator, Guy was both extremely modest and discrete: he has always been greatly appreciated by his colleagues and students. He was appointed knight of the Order of Academic Palms as soon as 1979, and officer in 1986. His research began in 1960 and he was retired in 1999, but he was still contributing to national and European research projects in the 2010’s (
Photography of Guy Magniez.
Most of the information on the life cycle of
Perhaps, the greatest contribution of Guy consisted in clarifying the systematics of
List of genera, species and subspecies described or co-described by Guy Magniez. Numbers refer to the location of species and subspecies as indicated in Figure 1.<br/>
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Maps showing the location of the 103 species and subspecies of aquatic isopods described or co-described by Guy Magniez. Numbers indicate taxa, the names of which are provided in Table 1.
Following the seminal work of
In his last poster presented at the 19th International Symposium of Subterranean Biology in Fremantle, Australia (21-26 September 2008),
Guy has voluntary remained unprecise as to when the colonization of groundwater by marine ancestors and diversification of groundwater lineages occur. This is because he has always been much skeptical about the assumptions of the climatic relict hypothesis. In particular, he never associated inland groundwater colonization to any marine transgression because colonization was necessarily an active process to him. Moreover, he was convinced that some species of asellids and stenasellids had experienced considerable range expansion by dispersing into extensive alluvial systems (
To end up this memorial, we provide below two biogeographic scenarios elaborated by Guy that would warrant further testing by today’s generation of subterranean phylogeographers. The first scenario is an attempt to explain the distribution of stenasellids at global scale (
The second scenario attempts to explain the evolutionary history of the Iberian stenasellids (
Paleobiogeography of the Ibero-Aquitanian stenasellids. Upper panel. Palaeogeographic continental areas attributed to the stygobiotic ancestors of the “
Guy Magniez devoted much of his life to the taxonomy of the
Authors: Florian Malard, Jean-Paul Henry, Christophe J. Douady
Data type: References list.
Explanation note: A list of 153 articles authored or co-authored by Guy Magniez.
Copyright notice: This dataset is made available under the Open Database License (
Link: doi: