page_title: Clinton Hart Merriam
section_title: Zoology
hierarchical_section_title: Clinton Hart Merriam / Zoology
caption_attribution_description: Map of life zones and crop zones
context_page_description: Clinton Hart Merriam was an American zoologist, mammalogist, ornithologist, entomologist, ecologist, ethnographer, geographer, and naturalist.
context_section_description: In 1886, he became the first chief of the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy of the United States Department of Agriculture, predecessor to the National Wildlife Research Center and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.  In 1883, he was a founding member of the American Ornithologists' Union.  He was one of the original founders of the National Geographic Society in 1888. He developed the concept of "life zones" to classify biomes found in North America along an altitudinal sequence corresponding to the zonal latitudinal sequence from Equator to Pole. In mammalogy, he is known as an excessive splitter, proposing, for example, tens of different species of North American brown bears in several genera.
  In 1899, he helped railroad magnate E. H. Harriman to organize an exploratory voyage along the Alaska coastline.
  Some species of animals that bear his name are Merriam's canyon lizard (Sceloporus merriami ), Merriam's wild turkey (Meliagris gallopavo meriami ), the now extinct Merriam's elk (Cervus elaphus merriami ), Merriam's pocket mouse (Perognathus merriami ), Merriam's chipmunk (Tamias merriami ), and Merriam's ground squirrel (Urocitellus canus ).
  His detail-oriented taxonomy and thorough field work were influential with zoologists for many years.
  The standard author abbreviation Merriam is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
caption: Life and crop zones according to Merriam (1898)
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