Cândido Firmino de Mello-Leitão

Cândido Firmino de Mello-Leitão (July 17, 1886 – December 14, 1948) was a Brazilian zoologist who is considered the founder of Arachnology in South America, publishing 198 papers on the taxonomy of Arachnida.

He was also involved with education, writing high-school textbooks, and contributed to biogeography, with essays on the distribution of Arachnida in the South American continent.

His first job as a zoologist (1913) was at the Escola Superior de Agricultura e Medicina Veterinária in Piraí, RJ, as a teacher of general Zoology and Systematics.

Among the many species of spiders researched and catalogued by the zoologist there is one in particular which is very intriguing, given its big size, beauty and carnivore habits (it is a bird eater) – the Lasiodora parahybana.

On June 6, 1949, his friend Augusto Ruschi inaugurated the Museum of Biology Mello-Leitão in Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo (state).