Rosemary Lowe-McConnell Collection

As described in the catalogue of the Freshwater Biological Association, Rosemary Lowe-McConnell was a pioneer in tropical fish ecology. She was born in Liverpool, and graduated from the university. She worked at the FBA studying the migration of silver eels. After World War II she went to Malawi to survey tilapias and fishery in the southern part of Lake Nyasa [now known as Lake Malawi in Malawi]. At Jinga, Uganda, four new species were found in Lake Jipe and the Pagani River in Kenya, describing the physiological changes from growth to reproduction of tilapias in ponds. She was briefly acting director of the East African Research organisation and wrote several papers about her work. She had to retire from the civil service when she married and could only work as a fisheries officer. From 1954-1956 she and her husband lived in Botswana, where she collected fishes from the Okavango delta. In 1957 they moved to British Guyana, South America, as her husband Richard McConnell was director of the Geological survey. Lowe McConnell surveyed the freshwater fishes in the Rupununi District, with help of local fishermen, which was the first survey to be done of the Guyana shelf between the West Indies and Brazil. On return to Britain in 1962 she based herself in the British Museum, where she studied the fishes she sent there. In 1968 she was the ichthyologist on the Royal Society of London Royal Geographical Society Xavantina Cachimbo expedition to north-eastern Mato Grosso in Brazil. This collection includes Lowe-McConnell’s notebooks, papers, and letters relating to experiments with eels, and light experiments, Lake Nyasa (Africa) surveys and notebooks, and samples of dried fish scales and opercular bones from Africa, Tilapia, Chambo.