Fernando da Costa Novaes (April 6, 1927 – March 24, 2004) was a Brazilian ornithologist who worked on the Amazonian bird fauna.

Education

In 1971 he was granted his doctorate from the State University of São Paulo at Rio Claro, with the thesis Estudo ecológico das aves em uma área de vegetação secundária do baixo rio Amazonas, Estado do Pará.

Career

Novaes was based at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, in Belém, where he assembled the second largest bird skin and skeleton collection in Brazil. This collection has been renamed in his honor. His major contributions were in defining the Amazon region's faunal boundaries and affinities, as well as clarifying taxonomic problems. In 1954, Novaes was granted a Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship to study in the US, at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, of the University of California at Berkeley, with the renowned ornithologist Alden H. Miller. Novaes's many publications are listed in the obituaries by Oren and Silva. He is commemorated in the name of the Alagoas foliage-gleaner, Philydor novaesi.

Selected publications