Albert Orr

Albert George Orr is an Australian entomologist.^[1]

Biography

Albert Orr was born in 1953 in Maleny, Queensland.^[2] He studied mathematics and entomology at Queensland University and graduated in 1974.^[1][2] He received a PhD from Griffith University in 1988 for work on mating in butterflies.^[3] From 1990 worked for 10 years at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, and from 2000, he has been an honorary research fellow at Griffith University.^[1][2]

Publications and awards

In 2003, he published A Guide to the Dragonflies of Borneo, for which he received the Worldwide Dragonfly Association’s 2005 award for outstanding achievements and contributions to the science of odonatology.^[2][1][4] This book was the first comprehensive guide to the dragonflies of the region.^[5]

He and co-author Vincent J. Kalkman were awarded the 2013 Whitley Medal by the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales for Field Guide to the damselflies of New Guinea.^[6][2] In 2011 he was awarded a Whitley Certificate of Commendation for The Butterflies of Australia.^[2] The Butterflies of Australia received a favourable review i Austral Ecology for being accessible to a less specialist audience, but still providing a large amount of quality scientific insights, and thereby being an excellent complement to Michael Braby's encyclopaedic and definitive Butterflies of Australia.^[7] Complete Field Guide to Dragonflies of Australia (second edition), illustrated by Orr, was called an ”invaluable resource” in the Royal Entomological Society’s Review.^[8]

He has published four more guides to dragonflies and damselflies of Asia, as the sole author in collaboration with other entomologists. He has been the editor of The Australian Entomologist.^[2][1][9]

Bibliography (books)

• A guide to the dragonflies of Borneo – Their identification and biology (2003)
• Dragonflies of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore (2005)
• The Metalwing Demoiselles of the Eastern Tropics – Their Identification and Biology (with Matti Hämäläinen 2007)
• The Butterflies of Australia (with Roger L. Kitching, 2010)
• Field Guide to the damselflies of New Guinea (with Vincent J. Kalkman 2013)
• Field Guide to the dragonflies of New Guinea (with Vincent J. Kalkman 2015)
• A field guide to the common Dragonflies and Damselflies of Bhutan (with Thinley Gyeltshen and Vincent J. Kalkman, 2017)
• Complete Field Guide to Dragonflies of Australia (with Günther Theischinger and John Hawking, 2021)