An Italian physician in Congo: Birds collected by Renzo Rosati (1879-1935) preserved in the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa, Italy

Renzo Rosati was an Italian physician who lived in Congo from 1907 to 1910 with the task entrusted to him by the Belgian government to study sleeping sickness and other tropical diseases. In this period he set up a collection of 228 skin-prepared birds collected from var- ious localities of Congo from 18-10-1909 to 28-06-1910. This paper not only provides a systematic review of the specimens currently preserved in the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa, Italy, but also presents, for the first time, the catalogue of the col- lection, which was previously unknown. It also explores Rosati’s relationship with J.P. Chapin, an ornithologist who, along with Herbert Lang, was part of the American Museum Congo Expedition (1909-1915). This connection led to the inclusion of four specimens shot by Rosati in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History.