From Karl von Frisch to Neuroethology: A Methodological Perspective on the Frischean Tradition's Expansion into Neuroethology

This paper examines a tradition of eusocial insect research stemming from the Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch. As I show in this paper, one of the most enduring features of the Frischean tradition has been an experimental methodology developed by Frisch in the early 1910s. By tracing this methodology's use through Frisch's student, Martin Lindauer, and two of Lindauer's students, Rudiger Wehner and Randolf Menzel, this paper illuminates a surprising aspect of ethology's development during the last half of the 20(th) century. Namely, it sheds light on how the Frischean tradition, a tradition that had a complicated relationship with ethology since the discipline's formation in the 1930s, produced scientists who became leading figures in neuroethology, the most prominent contemporary field of behavioral research to retain the label of ethology. Some of the features that distinguished Frisch's training method from the program of classical ethology and the work of his contemporaries later helped his academic descendants adapt the method to the neuroethological program.

Automated summary

This paper examines the impact of the Frischean tradition on behavioral biology and its significance in the development of neuroethology during the latter half of the 20th century. By tracing the use of Frisch's experimental methodology through his academic descendants, it sheds light on the leading figures in the field of neuroethology who emerged from the Frischean tradition.