Biology department’s Freitag conferred with Freshwater Taxonomist Special Achievement Award

Dr Hendrik Freitag, Professor and Research Coordinator of the Department of Biology, was given the Freshwater Taxonomist Award by the Philippine Society for Freshwater Sciences, Inc. (PSFS) last 9 November 2022. The award was conferred during the 3rd Philippine Symposium on Freshwater Biodiversity and Ecosystems (PSFBE2022) held at Ateneo.

The board members of PSFS, composed of esteemed limnologists, ecologists, and systematic biologists from various institutions throughout the country, awarded Freitag “in recognition of his decades’ work on the taxonomy of decapods and aquatic insects in the Philippines, including the publication of 140 new species description”. One of his many contributions is Hydraena ateneo, which he and his thesis advisees discovered inside the campus. Moreover, the citation reads that his “role in mainstreaming insect taxonomy as a devoted mentor to budding biodiversity researchers” is also appreciated. Instrumental to his role of a mentor is his founding of the Ateneo Biodiversity Research Laboratory.

The citation was read by PSFS President Dr Francis Magbanua (University of the Philippines Diliman) and Vice President Dr Rey Donne Papa (University of Santo Tomas). Freitag joins the elusive roster of 20 individuals and groups which were conferred a PSFS Special Achievement Award in the last six years. Previous recipients of the Freshwater Taxonomist Award were Augustus C. Mamaril, MSc (UP Diliman) and Dr Milagrosa R. Martinez-Goss (UP Los Baños) in 2016 and 2018, respectively, for their life’s work on studying planktons.

The complete citation of Dr Freitag is as follows:

“Dr Hendrik Freitag is a Professor at the Department of Biology, Ateneo de Manila University and a research associate at Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and Senckenberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden, Germany. He specializes in systematics of freshwater arthropods in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. He finished his Doctor rerum naturalium from Martin-Luther-University Halle–Wittenberg in Germany with his dissertation on macroinvertebrate assemblages in rivers in Palawan. He continued to work on Philippine biodiversity for his post-doctoral degree from the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria which he completed in 2007 and another post-doc from the Senckenberg Museum of Zoology Dresden in 2009. After which, he moved to teach at the De La Salle University Manila and later on at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he founded the Ateneo Biodiversity Research Laboratory.

“His work on freshwater biodiversity centers on the taxonomy of decapods and aquatic insects, especially beetles. He has published approximately 140 new species descriptions, including the massive inventory of Hydraenidae and Elmidae from the Philippines. In 2016, he published the authoritative checklist of aquatic and riparian beetles in the Philippines. Last year, the Ateneo Research Institute of Science and Engineering (ARISE) named him as one of the school’s most productive faculty due to his high research output. Recognized for his expertise, he serves as the lead author of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Regional Assessment for the Asian-Pacific region and a member of the Philippine Red List Work Committee. He actively engages in professional organizations having served as a board member of the Association of Systematic Biologists of the Philippines and the Biodiversity Conservation Society of the Philippines.

“More than being a taxonomist, he is a prolific mentor who aspires to further mainstream insect taxonomy. He has served as research adviser for undergraduate and graduate students who yielded numerous indexed publications and conference presentations. He is also an instructor of the citizen science initiative “Taxonexpeditions”. Currently, he serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the systematic and evolutionary entomology journal Tijdschrift voor Entomologie and the Country Coordinator of the Biodiversity Teaching in a Philippine-Cambodian-German (BIO-PHIL) Network, a joint co-teaching consortium whose goal is to capacitate Southeast Asian members in doing biodiversity research.”

_{Top photo: Dr Hendrik Freitag (center) of the Department of Biology receives the Freshwater Taxonomist Special Achievement Award last November 2022. PSFS President Dr Francis Magbanua (right) and Vice President Dr Rey Papa (left) read the award citation. Photo by Clister Pangantihon.}