Latreille was born into a humble family of Brives-la-Gaillarde, Corrèze, and in 1778 entered the college Lemoine in Paris. He was ordained a priest in 1786 and then went back to Brives, where he spent all of his free time studying insects. In 1788 he returned to Paris and became active in the scientific community there, his Memoire sur les mutilles decouvertes en France gaining him admission to the Society for Natural History.
As a priest with conservative leanings, the French Revolution made his situation uncomfortable; he left Paris, and was later imprisoned at Bordeaux. In 1796 he published Précis des caractères génériques des insectes, disposes dans un ordre naturel at Brives.
In 1798 he was given the task of arranging the entomological collection at the recently organized Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris; in 1814 he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences (succeeding G. A. Olivier), and in 1821 he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He was professor of zoology in the veterinary school at Alfort near Paris, and in 1830, when the chair of zoology of invertebrates at the Museum was divided after the death of Lamarck, Latreille was appointed professor of zoology of crustaceans, arachnids and insects, the chair of molluscs, worms and zoophytes being assigned to Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville.
Works
Histoire naturelle générale et particulière des crustaces et insectes (14 vols., 1802-1805), forming part of C. N. S. Sonnini's edition of Buffon
Genera crustaceorum et insectorum, secundum ordinem naturalem ut familias disposita (4 vols., 1806 i8o7)
Considérations sur l'ordre naturel des animaux composant les classes des crustaces, des arachnides, et des insectes (1810)
Famillies naturelles du règne animal, exposes succinctement et dans un ordre analytique (1825)
Cours d'entomologie (of which only the first volume appeared, 1831)
the whole of the section Crustaces, Arachnides, Insectes, in Georges CuviersRegne animal
many papers in the Annales du Museum, the Encyclopedie methodique, the Dictionnaire classique d'histoire naturelle and elsewhere.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
Because of these new discoveries, the databases and taxonomic models on livingunderworld.org are updated when new information is discovered or handed down, and an effort is made to keep it as current as possible.
Taxonomy is increasingly based on molecular findings, rather than morphological similarities, which has cleared up many "gray areas" in the caudate order, and enabled scientists to classify similar species definitively.
For information about Taxonomy, the Linnaean System of Classification, and Cladistics, see article 0012 - Introduction to Systematics and Taxonomy.
Next only to species and genus, the family is the most important rank in taxonomy.
It should be noted that the word ordo in nineteenth century works such as the Prodromus of de Candolle and the Genera Plantarum of Bentham and Hooker was used for what now is given the rank of family (see ordo naturalis).
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