František Moravec (parasitologist)

Moravec was born on 1 January 1939 in Velká Bystřice. He was in high school in Olomouc then was a student in the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic (at that time Czechoslovakia). For his Masters in 1962, he studied the parasitic worms of reptiles of Czechoslovakia. After graduation, he worked at the Institute of Parasitology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in České Budějovice, and in 1970 completed his thesis on nematodes parasites in fish. He is a world authority on Nematodes, especially their systematics and biology.^[1]

Among the most important works by Moravec, Tomáš Scholz^[1] mentions his revision of the genera Rhabdochona and Anguillicola, and also his clarification of the family Capillariidae, for which he proposed to split the old "catch-all" genus Capillaria in 14 genera. In 2001, Moravec proposed a new revision of the Capillariidae,^[2] with 22 genera. In 1994, Moravec published a 500-page book, Parasitic nematodes of freshwater fishes of Europe,^[3] which was considered a major contribution to the study of fish parasites.^[4]

In 1996, Scholz reported that Moravec had already published nearly 270 papers ^[1] — the number is now higher than 350, including eleven books.^[5] Moravec is a member of the Editorial Board of several international journals such as Folia Parasitologica, Helminthologia, Acta Societatis Zoologicae Bohemicae, Acta Parasitologica ^[1] and Parasite.