Cushman Foundation Award to Zheng Shouyi

Dr. Zheng Shouyi received the Joseph A. Cushman Award for outstanding contributions to the field of foraminiferology on November 3, 2003. Dr. Bilal U. Haq presented the award during the Cushman Foundation’s awards ceremony at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle, Washington. His summary of Dr. Zheng’s career accomplishments, adapted from his presentation, is given below.

Dr. Zheng Shouyi, recipient of the Cushman Foundation Award, is China’s leading foraminiferalogist, an academician and a senior research scientist at China’s premier Institute of Oceanology of the Academy of Sciences in Qingdao. Professor Zheng has spent a lifetime researching the foraminiferal faunas of the China Seas and has produced an impressive body of publications documenting these faunas.

Zheng Shouyi was born on May 20, 1931, in Manila, Philippines. She received her early school and university education in the Philippines, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Commercial Education and in Education from the University of the East. Her abiding interest in biology encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, under the advisorship of the eminent Philippine botanist, Dr. Gregorio Velasquez. During this time she came to know Professor J. J. Graham of Stanford University, who was collaborating with Ms. Priscilla Militante of the University of Philippines on the foraminiferal fauna of the Puerto Galera Area, northern Mindoro, Philippines. It was in their laboratory that she was first introduced to the beautiful and diverse morphology of the foraminifera under the microscope. She says that it was "love at first sight" which inspired her to pursue the study of foraminifera.

In 1956, Dr. Zheng heard the call from her motherland for intellectuals to take part in the reconstruction of the country and decided to return to China. She was first assigned to work in the Plankton Section of the Institute of Oceanology, then headed by Prof. Cheng Tsi-Chung, a University of the Philippines Master of Science graduate, who knew well and emphasized the importance of carrying out studies on the Recent foraminifera of the Chinese seas. Participation in a fisheries food-chain investigation of plankton as a resource was her debut into the microscopic work of counting hundreds of plankton organisms for quantitative analysis of their horizontal and vertical seasonal distribution in the water column. Next she began the study of the Recent foraminifera of the China Seas, which had not yet been studied. With her background in English, she quickly grasped the classic work of Brady on the foraminifera of the "Challenger" expedition, and the works of Galloway and Cushman. After seven years of work, her publication of four papers, coauthored with Prof. Cheng Tsi-Chung, began to fill the gap in the taxonomy, biogeographic distribution and ecology of planktonic foraminifera of the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea and northern South China Sea. Thirty species of planktonic foraminifera were described and their distribution patterns were used for tracing the direction and location of prevailing current systems and water masses in the Chinese marginal seas. Results of the distribution of planktonic foraminiferal assemblages of the East China Sea were presented at the First International Colloquium on Marine Pelagic Protozoa in Nice, France, in 1981. These results were cited by E. Boltovskoy and R. Wright in their 1976 book "Recent Foraminifera" (Dr. W. Junk, The Hague) as an example of the utility of planktonics as a proxy for water mass properties.

In addition to Dr. Zheng’s taxonomic studies of benthic foraminifera, she also carried out quantitative ecological studies that increased their usefulness as environmental indicators. A distinguishing feature of her taxonomic work was that it was based not only on external morphology but also, as much as possible, on internal structure. Dr. Zheng used an innovative method that employed a combination of wax and Canada balsam melted together as an infiltrate, to produce molds of hollow structures of chamber cavities, wall perforations, canal systems, etc., that resulted in beautiful, three-dimensional features of the test never before seen. She has profusely illustrated her morphological studies with some 8000 carefully hand-drawn illustrations. Three published papers on the foraminifera of the Xisha Islands and Zhongsha Islands in the tropical South China Sea exemplify this careful attention to internal morphology. These were published from 1978 to 1980 and with descriptions of 12 new genera and 462 species (116 new to science). Ten of the new genera were later included by A. Loeblich and H. Tappan (1988) in their authoritative monograph, "Foraminiferal Genera and their Classification" (Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York). Many new genera she established were based on consideration of the internal morphology studied in vertical or horizontal sections. Leading foraminiferal experts from many countries lauded the uniqueness and the usefulness of these studies, including professors Loeblich and Tappan from the USA, Professor Haake from Germany, Professor Boltovskoy from Argentina and Drs. Hatta and Ujiie from Japan. For these studies, she won the Third Prize of the 1987 National Natural Science Award.

Dr. Zheng’s monograph on agglutinated and porcelaneous foraminifera of the East China Sea, published in 1988, described 280 agglutinated species (including 60 new species and 1 new subfamily) and 146 porcelaneous species (including 25 new species and two new genera). She used different methods of revealing morphological features by making longitudinal or cross sections, dissecting the tests, and dry and wet grinding, to reveal the internal morphology. Her monograph contains 329 illustrations of internal morphology that aid new diagnoses at the level of species and higher. Loeblich and Tappan commented that the monograph "is likely to become a classic, and will be used extensively for years to come. The illustrations are excellent, as are the thin-sections. We will use this volume extensively ourselves over the next few years, as in our work on the foraminifers of the Sahul Shelf and Timor Sea, off northwest Australia, we find many species that are similar to yours". When their book on Timor Sea and Sahul Shelf assemblages finally came off the press in 1994, some 200 of Dr. Zheng’s species, including six new genera and more than 40 new species, were cited as taxonomic references. They named the new species Pseudoparrella zhengae in her honor. Dr. Zheng’s monograph won the First Prize of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Natural Science Award.

Results of Dr. Zheng’s ecological studies summarizing specific and nonspecific faunal trends of agglutinated foraminifera were published in 1988, 1990 and 1994. They were also presented in three international forums: the Third International Symposium on Benthic Foraminifera, Geneva, 1986; the Third International Workshop on Paleoecology, Biostratigraphy, Paleoceanography and Taxonomy of Agglutinated Foraminifera, Tübingen, 1989; and the Fourth International Symposium on Benthonic Foraminifera, Sendai, 1990.

Dr. Zheng’s voluminous compilation Fauna Sinica, Invertebrata vol. 26, Phylum Granuloreticulosa, Class Foraminiferea, Agglutinated Foraminifera, was published in 2001. It is based on some 700 surface sediment samples collected from the northernmost Bohai Sea to the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea, covering temperate, subtropical and tropical regions and ranging from semi-enclosed bays and shallow marginal waters to the deep sea. The 539 species described included many new taxa: 75 species, 8 genera, and 1 family. Included in the 72 new species were 3 new genera and 1 new subfamily, the descriptions for which were based on both external and internal morphological characteristics. This is probably one of the most comprehensive and well-illustrated works on agglutinated foraminifera in the world, having 122 plates, 130 text figures and 49 tables. It treats evolutionary development, test morphology, life habits and life processes of the living organism, and includes species characteristic of estuarine, shelf, deep-sea and hydrothermal environments. The section on paraecology discusses in detail relative and absolute abundance, distributional trends of dominant species and their use as environmental indicators.

Having studied over 2000 samples in detail and drawn some 8000 illustrations, Zheng Shouyi knows the morphology of foraminifera well. Because of this vast experience she is keen to share her insight with others and currently has a project of making macroscopic models based on the actual dimensions of the microscopic foraminifera. These would be excellent educational tools in micropaleontological courses and display items in museums. She is anxious to let people get to learn more about these "tiny giants of the seas," as they were dubbed by Professor Wayne Bock (1977, Journal of Ocean Learning Institute, vol. 1, no. 1) in allusion to the important role they play as biological indicators of the world oceans. She plans to produce as many foraminiferal models as possible, including miliolid, nodo-sariid, nonionid, buliminid and rotaliid species, as well as agglutinated taxa, and has already finished some 150 models. When marketed, these reproductions will further the cause of foraminiferal education tremendously, and will be a true contribution to world foraminiferal research and application. In addition to these small models, some 40 large stone sculptures of foraminifera (several thousand times their original size), serve as a Qingdao city attraction. They reflect a combination of marine science and culture, and let the public share in foraminifera’s beautiful artistry of Nature.

In addition to her unwavering interest in foraminiferal research for nearly half a century, Zheng Shouyi has also enthusiastically participated in the country’s political life as an active scientist, championing the cause of scientific issues at both the provincial and national levels. Her effectiveness as an advocate for science is illustrated by a recent effort on her part that saved one of the premier Miocene fossil sites in Shandong Province, reported in Science, 2001, p.1481, "Fossil Trove Preserved".

Bilal U. Haq
National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia, USA

REFERENCES TO DR. ZHENG’S PUBLICATIONS

CHENG TSI-CHUNG and CHENG SAU-YEE (ZHENG SHOUYI), 1962, On the ecology of the planktonic foraminifera of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea. Oceanologia et Limnologia Sinica, vol. IV, no. 1–2, pp. 60–85.

CHENG TSI-CHUNG and ZHENG SHOUYI, 1978, The Recent foraminifera of the Xisha Islands, Guangdong Province, China I. Studia Marina Sinica, vol. 12, no. 12, pp. 149–166, Pls. 1–33.

ZHENG SHOUYI, 1988, The Agglutinated and Porcelaneous Foraminifera of the East China Sea, Science Press, Beijing, pp.1–377, pls. I-LIV & pls. I–XXXIII.

ZHENG SHOUYI and FU ZHAOXIAN, 1994, Foraminiferal faunal trends in China Seas. In: Zhou Di et al. (Eds.) Oceanology of China Seas, Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, vol. 1, pp. 255–274.

ZHENG SHOUYI and FU ZHAOXIAN, 2001, Fauna Sinica, Invertebrata, vol. 26, Phylum Granuloreticulosa, Class Foraminiferea, Agglutinated Foraminifera, Science Press, Beijing, 779 pp. pls. I–CXXII.

Bilal U. Haq

Journal of Foraminiferal Research, July 2005, v. 35, no. 3, p. 274-276