Marco Antonio Serna Díaz


Hermano Marco Antonio Serna Díaz was a herpetologist, ornithologist, and naturalist from Colombia.

Life

Serna was born to Marco Antonio Serna and Anna Judith Díaz in San Vicente Ferrer in Antioquia, Colombia. On 20 June 1950 he entered the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in San Pedro, Antioquia, where he discovered his love for natural sciences. From 1956 to 1958 he studied in San Antonio de Prado. On 10 January 1962 he made his perpetual profession at the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools.
He was curator of birds, amphibians, and reptiles at the Museo de La Salle in Bogotá, and professor of ornithology at the University of Antioquia.
Serna was both president of the Sociedad Antioqueña de Ornitología which he co-founded in 1984, and the Asociación Colombiana de Ornitología, two notable ornithological organisations in Colombia.
Together with Juan Arturo Rivero, a herpetologist from Puerto Rico, he described several new frog species, including Pristimantis dorsopictus, Pristimantis johannesdei, Hyloxalus breviquartus, Pseudopaludicola ceratophryes, and Colostethus ramirezi.
In 1971, he collected the last known specimen of the Antioquia brush finch.
In 2012, the newly described Antioquia wren was named in his honour. In 1984, Rivero described the frog species Eleutherodactylus sernai which was later synonymized with Eleutherodactylus cerastes.