Gustav Kramer (zoologist)

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Gustav Kramer (born March 11, 1910 in Mannheim , † April 19, 1959 in Castrovillari , Italy ) was a German zoologist and ornithologist . He discovered in the late 1940s that birds can use the sun as a compass .

Life

Gustav Kramer was the son of the hotel owner of the same name Gustav Kramer (* 1877) and his wife Elisabeth Werner (* 1884). After studying biology in Berlin , during which he a. a. Had sat in with Oskar Heinroth at the Zoo-Aquarium and was particularly interested in amphibians , Kramer received his doctorate in Berlin in 1933 with Erwin Stresemann through a study on the orientation performance of the lateral line organ in the clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) . He then worked in Heidelberg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for medical research under Ludolf von Krehl on the metabolism of amphibians; in Heidelberg he also received his habilitation . As early as the 1930s, Kramer worked at the Rossitten ornithological station , where he dealt with bird migration and published in the magazine Der Vogelzug . After completing his habilitation, he worked as an assistant at the German-Italian Institute for Marine Biology in Rovigno and finally - until 1941 - in Naples, researching lizards , especially the Adriatic wall lizard . Vergleichend- morphologically and experimentell- genetically he examined in particular the differences between Festlands- and Island breeds , as from this draw conclusions about the speciation could be drawn. In addition to these ethological and taxonomic - zoogeographical publications, his first studies on allometry in birds and bird migration were also made .

From 1948 Gustav Kramer headed a department of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Biology in Wilhelmshaven . There he developed a work program to solve the question of how birds can orientate themselves over long distances. He constructed an apparatus with which his test animals could be shown a false position of the sun, so that he could prove that the preferred direction of flight depends on the position of the sun in the sky. Since such a capability presupposes the possession of an internal clock that can measure the time of day, Kramer sought a collaboration and the like. a. with Jürgen Aschoff .

In fact, on April 1, 1959, Kramer and Aschoff were assigned to the newly emerging Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology and appointed head of the Radolfzell ornithological station; A new building was to be built for him in Walddorf near Tübingen . Its excavation work had already begun when Gustav Kramer fell from a steep face on April 19, 1959 while trying to take young rock pigeons from their nests in the mountains of Calabria , near Cosenzas , and was immediately dead. His two sons hid his body at risk of death from the high mountain river Raganello . The funeral took place on April 27th in Neckargemünd .

In an obituary in the Journal für Ornithologie , Konrad Lorenz wrote that “his justified world fame as the initiator of experimental analytical orientation research” should not make one forget “what very important results Gustav Kramer had achieved in completely different areas”. This includes the discovery of the "remote tactile sense" in the clawed frog in his doctoral thesis and his competence in the field of bird allometry .

Kramer had been married to Romilde Faraggian since 1939 and the couple had two sons.

Fonts (selection)

  • Movement studies on birds in the Berlin Zoological Garden. In: Journal of Ornithology. Volume 78, No. 3, 1930, pp. 257-268, doi: 10.1007 / BF01953322 .
  • Train at great heights. In: Bird migration. Volume 2, No. 2, 1931, pp. 69-71, full text (PDF) .
  • Investigations into the sensory performance and the orientation behavior of Xenopus laevis Daud. In: Zoological Yearbooks. Vol. 52, 1933, pp. 629-676; zugl. Phil. Diss. (Berlin 1933), Fischer, Jena 1933.
  • The resting metabolic rate of lizards and its quantitative relationship to individual size. In: Journal of Comparative Physiology. Volume 20, No. 5, 1934, pp. 600-616, doi: 10.1007 / BF00339155 .
  • with Robert Mertens : On the distribution and systematics of the continental wall lizards of Istria. In: Senckenbergiana. Volume 20, Frankfurt am Main 1938, pp. 48-66.
  • About tendencies in the direction of the nocturnal unrest in caged birds. In: Ernst Mayr and Ernst Schüz (eds.): Ornithology as biological science. 28 contributions as a commemorative publication for Erwin Stresemann's 60th birthday. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1949, pp. 269-283, ISBN 978-3-53301286-3 .
  • Oriented migratory activity of caged songbirds. In: The natural sciences. Volume 37, No. 8, 1950, pp. 188-188, doi: 10.1007 / BF00638884 .
  • Further analysis of the factors that determine the migration activity of the caged bird. In: The natural sciences. Volume 37, No. 16, 1950, pp. 377-378, doi: 10.1007 / BF00626007 .
  • A new method for researching train orientation and the results obtained so far. In: Proc. Xth. Intern. Ornithole. Congr. (Uppsala 1950). 1951, pp. 269-280.
  • The orientation of the birds to the sun. In: Negotiations of the German Zoological Society (Freiburg 1952). 1953, pp. 72-84.
  • Experiments on bird orientation. In: Ibis. Volume 94, 1952, pp. 265-285, doi: 10.1111 / j.1474-919X.1952.tb01817.x .
  • Is the height of the sun used in the homing orientation? In: Journal of Ornithology. Volume 94, No. 3-4, 1953, pp. 201-219, doi: 10.1007 / BF01922508 .
  • Recent experiments on bird orientation. In: Ibis. Volume 101, 1959, pp. 399-416, doi: 10.1111 / j.1474-919X.1959.tb02396.x .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Konrad Lorenz: For guidance. [Erwin Stresemann on his 70th birthday]. In: Journal of Ornithology. Volume 101, No. 1–2, 1960, pp. 3–6, full text (PDF)
  2. ↑ Dr. Gustav Kramer on ZOBODAT entry from Kramer with list of publications.
  3. ↑ Gustav Kramer †. In: The ornithological station . Volume 20, No. 1, 1959, p. 73, full text (PDF)
  4. ^ Konrad Lorenz : Gustav Kramer † . In: Journal of Ornithology. Volume 100, 1959, pp. 265–268, full text (PDF)
personal data
SURNAME Kramer, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biologist , zoologist , ornithologist , discovered the sun compass in birds
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH April 19, 1959
Place of death Castrovillari , Italy