Dietrich Neumann (zoologist)

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Dietrich Neumann (born November 12, 1931 in Göttingen ; † December 23, 2012 in Cologne ) was a German zoologist who dealt with chronobiology and was considered an expert on tidal and lunar internal clocks . He also dealt with ecology and limnology .

Life

Dietrich Neumann was the son of the German language professor Friedrich Neumann . From 1943 to 1945 he went to boarding school in the Allgäu, then attended grammar school in Göttingen . Neumann has been involved in ornithology since his youth. From 1951 he studied zoology at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and received his doctorate there in 1958 under Karl Henke (and after his death in 1956 supervised by Hans Piepho ). The subject of the dissertation was the influence of the environment on the patterns of the shells of the common tub snails originally collected in the Werra and bred by him , whereby he demonstrated that fluctuations in salinity influenced the patterns. His interest in chronobiology began with Erwin Bünning during a semester in 1954 at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen . As a post-doctoral student he was Karl Strenzke's assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Biology in Wilhelmshaven until 1962 , where he investigated the effects of the salt content in water on the spread of mosquitoes (Chironomidae). In 1962 he became Gerhard Krause's assistant at the Zoological Institute in Würzburg, where he completed his habilitation in 1964. The topic was the chronobiology (hatching periods) of a mosquito ( Clunio marinus , it became his preferred experimental animal) in the intertidal zone. In 1967 Neumann became full professor for zoology and physiological ecology at the University of Cologne , where he retired in 1997.

Neumann investigated the influence of moon phases and day-night rhythm on the time of hatching on Clunio marinus and similar mosquitoes (they always hatch at low spring water , the period of which is different from place to place). Through cross-breeding experiments, he demonstrated that the hatching rhythms are genetically fixed differently in different locations. He also demonstrated the existence of an internal moon clock. At his institute he also promoted research on mollusks and birds and most recently dealt with fishery biology and the ecology of the Rhine and of quarry ponds in its area of ​​influence and of floodplains in general. From 1998 to 2010 he was chairman of the scientific advisory board of the fish migration program of North Rhine-Westphalia. He was also involved in nature conservation issues, for example the desludging of the Bienen Old Rhine near Rees , where the institute's ecological station was set up in 1993. The institute had had a branch in Grietherbusch near Rees since 1971.

Neumann had been a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences since 1982 . 1977/78 he was President of the German Zoological Society and from 1997 to 2006 Chairman of the Alexander Koenig Society in Bonn. From 1969 to 1998 he was co-editor of Oecologia . He was on the advisory board of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen, the Institute for Bird Research in Wilhelmshaven and the Biological Institute Helgoland .

He had been married to the Spanish biologist Josefina Ogando-Rubio since 1961, whom he met in Wilhelmshaven at the MPI for Marine Biology . With her he had two sons. With his wife he collected East Asian paintings, which they donated to the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin in 2012 . In 2010, the couple donated their ceramic collection to the Grassi Museum in Leipzig.

He also published on East Asian art.

Fonts (selection)

Besides the writings cited in the footnotes:

  • Osmotic resistance and osmoregulation of the river snail Theodoxus fluviatilis L. , Biologisches Zentralblatt, Volume 79, 1960, pp. 585–605,
  • Nutritional biology of a rhipidoglossal gill snail , Hydrobiologia, Volume 17, 1961, pp. 133-151
  • The analysis of limiting ion effects in marine and freshwater animals with the help of ecological, physiological and breeding methods , Kieler Meeresforschungen, Volume 18, 1962, pp. 38-54
  • The lunar and daily hatching period of the Mücke Clunio , Z.vergl.Physiol., Volume 53, 1966, pp. 1-61
  • Adaptation of chironomids to intertidal environments , Ann. Rev. Entomol., Vol. 21, 1976
  • Life cycle strategy of an intertidal midge between subtropic and arctic latitudes , in: Taylor, Karban (Ed.), The evolution of insect life cycles. Proc. Life Sciences, Springer Verlag, New York 1986.
  • with J. Rutschke, Chr. Seidenberg-Busse, A. Petermeier, St. Staas, F. Molls: Gravel-pit lakes connected with the River Rhine as a reserve for high productivity of plankton and young fish . In: Int. Conf. "Rehabilitation of the River Rhine, Arnheim 1993". Water Science & Technology, Vol. 29, 1994, pp. 267-271
  • Physiological clocks of insects , The natural sciences. Volume 82, 1995, pp. 310-320

literature

  • Obituary by Armin Kureck in Zoologie 2013, communications from the German Zoological Society, pp. 67–72, PDF (655 kB)

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Published as: Morphological and experimental investigations on the variability of the color patterns on the shell of Theodoxus fluviatilis L. , Z.Morph.Ökol.Tiere, Volume 48, 1959
  2. ↑ For example, the poetry and picture book Mit Vogelsang and Flower Dress , Marburg 1999 and, with his wife Josefina Ogando, the exhibition catalog Fascinated by Nature - Landscapes, Plants and Animals in the Tradition of Chinese and Japanese Painting from the Neumann-Ogando Collection (Ed .: Museum for Asian Art Berlin, Petersberg: Imhof-Verlag 2012)
personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Dietrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 2012
Place of death Cologne