Vadim G. Gratshev was one of world leading experts in palaeoentomology. Vadim graduated from the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute in 1987 and taught biology at a high school for three years until 1989. Then he decided to pursue academic science and joined the Laboratory of Arthropods at the Paleontological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences in 1991, first as a Kuperwood Fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and since 1994 as a full-time researcher. Weevils and dryopoids were always his main passion, although his area of interests extended far beyond that. He produced over 20 scientific papers, including an outstanding comparative study of the hind wing venation of the superfamily Curculionoidea published in co-authorship with Vladimir V. Zherikhin

Vladimir Zherikhin

Vladimir Vasilevich Zherikhin , of the Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, was one of the world's leading paleoentomologists and coleopterists...

. Being a keen field researcher, he participated in numerous expeditions to the Maritime Province

Primorsky Krai

Primorsky Krai , informally known as Primorye , is a federal subject of Russia . Primorsky means "maritime" in Russian, hence the region is sometimes referred to as Maritime Province or Maritime Territory. Its administrative center is in the city of Vladivostok...

 and Sakhalin

Sakhalin

Sakhalin or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N.It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast...

 Island, Kuznetskii Alatau, Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...

 Region, Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

, Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...

, Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

, Tadjikistan, Turkmenia, and Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

. The material he collected on his trip to the Drakensberg and Zululand in 2005 inspired him to commence a new project on Afrotropical Elmidae and Anthribidae

Anthribidae

Anthribidae is a family of beetles also known as fungus weevils. The antennae are not elbowed, may occasionally be longer than the body and thread-like, and can be the longest of any members of Curculionoidea...

. Being an optimistic, cheerful multi-talented individual with subtle sense of humour, he did not restrict his interests to extinct and extant beetles. He was an expert in noble orchid

Noble orchid

The Noble Orchid is an orchid found in Himalayan regions and in temperate locations. It is the state flower of Sikkim....

s, aquarium design and raising gecko

Gecko

Geckos are lizards belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from 1.6 cm to 60 cm....

s, and published several papers on those topics. He was a skilful wood-carver, and his knowledge of Japanese history and literature was not amateur.

External links

• Personal Web page
• In memoriam
• International Palaeoentomological Society

Selected References

• Nikitsky N.B., Lawrence J.F., Kirejtshuk A.G., Gratshev V.G. 1993. A new family, Decliniidae fam. n., from the Russian Far East and its taxonomic relationships (Coleoptera, Polyphaga). Russian Entomological Journal 2 (5-6): 3-10.
• Zherikhin V.V., Gratshev V.G. 1995. A comparative study of the hind wing venation of the superfamily Curculionoidea with phylogenetic implicatons. In: Pakaluk J. , Slipinski S.A. (eds). Biology, Phylogeny, and Classification of Coleoptera. Papers celebrating 80th Birthday of Roy A. Crowson. V. 2. Warszawa: Muzeum i Instytut Zoologii PAN, pp. 634–777.
• Gratshev V.G., Zherikhin V.V. 2000. The weevils from the Late Cretaceous New Jersey amber (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea). In: Grimaldi D.A. (ed.). Studies on Fossils in Amber, with particular reference to the Cretaceous of New Jersey. Leiden: Backhuys Publ., pp. 241–254.
• Gratshev V.G., Zherikhin V.V. 2003. The fossil record of weevils and related beetle families (Coleoptera, Curculionoidea). Acta zoologica cracoviensia 46 (suppl.-Fossil Insects): 129-138.
• Zherikhin V.V., Gratshev V.G. 2004. Fossil curculionoid beetles (Coleoptera, Curculionoidea) from the Lower Cretaceous of Northeastern Brazil. Paleontological Journal 38 (5): 528-537.
• Soriano C., Gratshev V.G., and Delclòs X. 2006. New Early Cretaceous weevils (Insecta, Coleoptera, Curculionoidea) from El Montsec, Spain. Cretaceous Research 27 (4): 555-564.
• Anisyutkin L.N., Grachev V.G., Ponomarenko A.G., Rasnitsyn A.P., Vršanský P. 2008. Part II. Fossil Insects in the Cretaceous Mangrove Facies of Southern Negev, Israel. In: Krassilov V. and Rasnitsyn A., eds, Plant–arthropod interactions in the early angiosperm history. Evidence from the Cretaceous of Israel. Sofia-Moscow & Leiden-Boston: Pensoft Publishers & BRILL, pp. 189–223.
• Gratshev V.G., Perkovsky E.E. 2008. New species of the genus Glaesotropis (Insecta: Coleoptera: Anthribidae) from Rovno amber. Paleontological Journal 42 (1): 60-62.