Aubrey Manning

Aubrey William George Manning (born April 24, 1930 in Chiswick , London , England - † October 20, 2018 ) was a British zoologist specializing in population genetics and behavioral genetics and a science author . From 1973 to 1997 was Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh . He became known to the non-university public in Great Britain for his television and radio broadcasts for the public service BBC .

Life

Aubrey Manning was born in Chiswick, a western part of London. Because of the German air raids on London , his family moved to rural Surrey in 1940 - during World War II . In Egham he attended Strode's Grammar School , and - influenced by a biology teacher at his school - he began to study zoology at University College London in 1948 . In the third year of his studies he chose entomology as a major, influenced by lectures by Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen in the summer of 1951, but interest in comparative behavioral research grew shortly before his final exam .

Thanks to a graduate scholarship , he was able to join Nikolaas Tinbergen's working group at the University of Oxford , which was still being set up, at the end of 1951, and was entrusted with a doctoral thesis on foraging for bees - especially bumblebees . His research assignment was to clarify which stimuli flowering plants use to attract the pollinating bees and, in particular, what role the so-called juice marks play in this. Manning experimented with numerous, differently designed artificial flowers and finally came to the result that the sap marks form color contrast lines in the center of the flower and thus lure the bees from the edge of the flower, to which they had originally reacted, to its center. Three years after the experiments began, he obtained his doctorate degree (D. Phil.).

In parallel to his experiments with bumblebees and other bees, Manning had started to analyze the courtship behavior of Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila simulans together with a doctoral student in his research group, his future wife Margaret Bastock . A yellow melanogaster mutant was known to have males wooing females less successfully than non-mutant individuals, although no deviations in their physique and behavior were discernible. With numerous Drosophila pairs, both made ethograms by noting their movements every second and thus describing the interactions between the male's sexual arousal and the female's stimulating behavior. They discovered u. a. that there is a certain sequence of behaviors of the males towards the female, which however can be interrupted; individual elements of this sequence can also be repeated several times. The publication resulting from their observations in early 1955, The Courtship of Drosophila melanogaster , was one of the first behavioral biology papers on the behavior of Drosophila and contributed significantly to the fact that from then on Manning mainly dealt with the behavioral genetics of this genus . After his doctoral examination, however, he did his military service until September 1956 with a unit of the Royal Artillery in Germany, which was subordinate to NATO .

With the assistance of JBS Haldane had stayed with the Manning since his student days at the University College London in contact, he was on his return to civilian life a job as a research assistant offered (assistant lecturer) at the University of Edinburgh. He accepted the offer and stayed in Edinburgh until the end of his academic career. He resumed his research on Drosophila and showed that the courtship behavior of the males is determined to a considerable extent by the females: he succeeded in bringing females of the generally sluggish species Drosophila simulans into courtship mood with males of the more agile Drosophila melanogaster the consequence that the melanogster males also moved less hectically . It could also be concluded from this that the behavior of the males of both closely related sister species had hardly changed in the course of speciation; rather, their different courtship behavior could be interpreted as a mere reaction to the changed stimuli of the females.

In Edinburgh he started a. a. to establish two new Drosophila breeding lines by way of disruptive selection , on the one hand by breeding the flies that mate particularly quickly from generation to generation, on the other hand the particularly hesitant mating flies (and thirdly, a control group without selection) - a procedure that can quickly lead to observable results due to the generation sequence of around 14 days. In addition to numerous studies on various Drosophila breeding lines established by him, he worked in the 1960s on his textbook An Introduction to Animal Behavior , first published in 1967 , which was last published in 2012 in its 6th revised edition and at the time of its first publication the first introductory work ins The field of behavioral research in English was. In addition, an inexpensive version was produced for use in developing countries.

From the late 1960s onwards, Manning became increasingly involved in the emerging British environmental movement , for decades in particular in the Scottish Wildlife Trust , of which he was president from 1990 to 1996. He was also President of the Abberley and Malvern Hills Geopark from 2004 to 2010 and President of the British conservation organization The Wildlife Trusts from 2005 to 2010 . As part of this commitment, he also campaigned for improved access to birth control methods worldwide .

After his retirement he moderated a. a. science television programs Earth Story on BBC Two (1998) and Talking Landscapes on BBC Four (2001) ; and The Rules of Life on BBC Radio 4 (2005).

From 1959 until her death in 1982 Manning was married to the zoologist Margaret Bastock. He left behind his second wife, child psychotherapist Joan Herrman, whom he married in 1985, and three sons.

Honors

• In 1973 he became a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh elected
• In 1998 he was appointed Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire .
• In 2003 he was awarded the silver medal of the Zoological Society of London .

Fonts in German

• Behavioral research. An introduction. Translated by Günter Ehret. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1979, ISBN 978-3-540-09643-6 .

Web links

• Aubrey Manning's website on the University of Edinburgh server .
• Aubrey Manning Memorial Service. Speech by science writer Mary Colwell at a memorial service in Edinburgh on April 13, 2019.
• Marian Stamp Dawkins: Aubrey Manning (1930-2018). Obituary. In: Ibis. Volume 161, No. 2, 2019, p. 479, doi: 10.1111 / ibi.12713 .
• Aubrey Manning (1930-2018). At: geolsoc.org.uk , last accessed on May 29, 2020.
• Population: Can We Begin to Talk Sensibly? Presentation by Aubrey Manning (video).

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Aubrey Manning obituary. On: theguardian.com on November 11, 2018, last accessed on May 28, 2020.
2. ↑ Obituary. Aubrey Manning, zoologist and broadcaster. On: heraldscotland.com of November 2, 2018.
3. ^ Aubrey Manning: The Ontogeny of an Ethologist. In: Donald A. Dewsbury: Studying Animal Behavior. Autobiographies of the Founders. Chicago University Press, Chicago and London 1985, ISBN 978-0-226-14410-8 , pp. 288-313, here: pp. 289-290.
4. ^ Aubrey Manning: The Effect of Honey Guides. In: Behavior. Volume 9, No. 1, 1956, pp. 114-139, doi: 10.1163 / 156853956X00273 .
   Aubrey Manning: Some Aspects of the Foraging Behavior of Bumble-Bees. In: Behavior. Volume 9, No. 1, 1956, pp. 164-200, doi: 10.1163 / 156853956X00291 .
5. ↑ Margaret Bastock and Aubrey Manning: The Courtship of Drosophila melanogaster. In: Behavior. Volume 8, No. 1, 1955, pp. 85-110, doi: 10.1163 / 156853955X00184 .
6. ↑ Aubrey Manning: The Sexual Behavior of Two Sibling Drosophila Species. In: Behavior. Vol. 15, No. 1-2, 1960, pp. 123-145, doi: 10.1163 / 156853960X00133 .
7. ↑ Aubrey Manning: The effects of artificial selection for mating speed in Drosophila melanogaster. In: Animal Behavior. Volume 9, No. 1-2, 1961, pp. 82-92, doi: 10.1016 / 0003-3472 (61) 90054-9 .
8. ↑ Aubrey Manning: Drosophila and the evolution of behavior. In: Viewpoints in Biology. Volume 4, 1965, pp. 125-169.
9. ^ Aubrey Manning: An Introduction to Animal Behavior. 6th edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012, ISBN 978-0-521-16514-3 (1st edition 1967, published by Addison-Wesley).
10. ^ Aubrey Manning, The Ontogeny of an Ethologist, p. 303.
11. ^ Aubrey Manning: A lifetime in conservation. On: scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk of October 23, 2018, last accessed on May 28, 2020.
12. ↑ Professor Aubrey Manning (1930-2018). At: geopark.org.uk , last accessed on May 28, 2020.
13. ^ Professor Aubrey Manning OBE - a tribute from The Wildlife Trusts. On: wildlifetrusts.org , last accessed on May 29, 2020.
14. ^ Professor Aubrey Manning, zoologist and population campaigner who enthralled students as well as television audiences - obituary. On: telegraph.co.uk October 26, 2018.
    populationmatters.org: Patrons. ( Memento from June 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive )