Díaz-Canel mourns death of scientist Silva Taboada

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 16 (ACN) Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez lamented the death of the outstanding Cuban scientist and naturalist Gilberto Silva Taboada and sent his condolences to his family in particular and to the Cuban scientific community in general.

Silva Taboada, who recently received the National Cultural Heritage Award 2021, boasted a long and fruitful scientific career marked by relevant contributions to Cuban mastozoology, especially in the Order of Chiroptera, as well as in cave-dwelling fauna, and in the museology of Cuban natural history. He was a founding member of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, and of the American Museum of Natural Sciences in New York, which awarded him the doctorate Honoris Causa in 2016, of the Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation Union, of the Speleological Society of Cuba. He was also curator emeritus of the National Museum of Natural History.

He had a dozens of publications, including his three classic works Los Murciélagos de Cuba (Cuba’s bats), Sinopsis de la espeleofauna cubana (Synopsis of Cuban cave-dwelling fauna) and Compendio de los mamíferos terrestres cubanos vivientes y extinguidos (Compendium of Cuban living and extinct terrestrial mammals).

No less remarkable were his contributions to the museology of natural history, especially in the theoretical-practical management of exhibitions and public studies.