Did Darwin expect his Origin readers to know the researchers he was referencing?

I made a post over on r/AskHistorians but it got no traction so I figured I’d ask here.

Essentially, Darwin many times invokes the names of other researchers in the Origin, but doesn’t provide any further info on who they were or the work they published their findings in. Were the Victorian public generally knowledgeable about these researchers? Or did Darwin just throw these references in for the more academically-minded among them? Personally, if I wasn’t reading an annotated version of the book, I’d be clueless as to who these guys were!

Thanks for any info you can provide!