Émile Oustalet


Jean-Frédéric Émile Oustalet was a French zoologist.

Oustalet was born at Montbéliard, in the department of Doubs. He studied at the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes and his first scientific work was on the respiratory organs of dragonfly larvae. He was employed at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, where he succeeded Jules Verreaux as assistant-naturalist in 1873. In 1900 he succeeded Alphonse Milne-Edwards as Professor of Mammalogy.
French ornithologist Émile Oustalet described a specimen from Branco as a separate species Passer brancoensis in 1883, which was recognised as the subspecies Passer iagoensis brancoensis by W. R. P. Bourne, who claimed to observe differences between Iago sparrows from different islands.
He co-authored Les Oiseaux de la Chine with Armand David, and also wrote Les Oiseaux du Cambodge.
Oustalet was president of the third International Ornithological Congress held in Paris in 1900.
A species of Malagasy chameleon, Furcifer oustaleti, was named in his honor by François Mocquard in 1894.

Selected writings