Hanna-Maria Zippelius

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Hanna-Maria Zippelius (born May 19, 1922 in Detmold ; † August 19, 1994 ) was a German ethologist who for decades dealt in particular with the innate foundations of the communication skills of small mammals. In her highly regarded and passionately discussed late work (with the deliberately ambiguous title “The measured theory”) she published a comprehensive description, analysis and criticism of the instinct theory by Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen in 1992 .

Career

After graduation in 1940 Hanna-Maria Zippelius began the study of zoology , botany and chemistry in Freiburg . In November 1941 she went to Munich , where she a. a. worked with Karl von Frisch on research into the ultrasound orientation of bats. From November 1943 to May 1, 1945 she worked as a research assistant under Karl von Frisch in the "Nosema epidemic control" initiated by the Reich Research Service, the fight against a bee epidemic.

On May 24, 1944 , Hanna-Maria Zippelius received her doctorate. rer. nat. in Munich on "The mating biology of some Orthopter species ", u. a. using the example of the field cricket . After that, in 1946/47 she worked mainly as a voluntary research assistant at the Lippisches Landesmuseum Detmold . In September 1947 she began studying human medicine , first in Marburg and from 1948 in Bonn , with the aim of working in the border area between biology and medicine.

In the 1950s she worked with the help of a total of four one-year research grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG) in a priority program of the federal government on "Behavioral research and sensory physiology". a. by Konrad Lorenz . This led to a close collaboration with Wolfgang Schleidt from the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in the field of ultrasound orientation of various species of mice as well as of garden dormice and weasel .

In 1958 Hanna-Maria Zippelius passed the medical state examination so that she could have worked as a doctor. From October 1959, however, she worked as a lecturer for the behavioral biology of mammals at the Zoological Institute of the University of Giessen (until summer 1967). On January 27, 1965, she completed her habilitation in zoology at the University of Gießen with the text "Means of communication for indigenous small mammals, a contribution to the problem of animal language".

From April 1, 1966, she was employed as a lecturer for behavioral research at the University of Bonn , where she became a private lecturer for zoology (especially for behavioral studies) on December 20, 1967 . On March 13, 1969, she was appointed university lecturer in Bonn and on November 21, 1972, also in Bonn, professor .

She retired on July 31, 1987 . After the early death of Prof. Klaus Immelmann , she represented the chair for behavioral physiology at Bielefeld University from October 1987 to September 1989 .

The physicist Annette Zippelius emerged from her marriage to the museum director Adelhart Zippelius .

Research topics

After her initial research focus on ultrasound communication in bats, mice and other small mammals, Hanna-Maria Zippelius had encouraged and accompanied studies on very different issues in the field of communication since her teaching position in Giessen. a. about innate and acquired behaviors in human infants, about analogies in the behavior of humans and animals, about sounds in the social structure of non- hominid primates, about similarities in the behavior of forest dogs and domestic dogs , about scent marking in mammals, about the courtship of the grouse , about threatening gestures Birds, the acquisition of song by zebra finches and the territorial behavior of anemonefish.

On the test bench: the instinct theory

In the summer of 1980, Zippelius began field observations during the breeding season in the herring gull colony on the North Sea island of Langeoog . The repeated study visits to Langeoog as well as subsequent laboratory experiments with herring gull eggs and chicks quickly raised serious doubts as to whether previous behavioral studies (e.g. by Nikolaas Tinbergen ) had correctly interpreted the mechanisms of egg recognition in herring gulls, for example. Even after several hundred tests, no preference for “over-normal” triggers (i.e. the larger the egg, the more intense the reaction) could be demonstrated.

In the Bonn control examinations, claims made by Tinbergen regarding parent identification in herring gull chicks also proved to be unreproducible. In contrast to older claims, the tests of the Zippelius working group suggested that herring gulls have no “ innate knowledge ” of their parents, but rather peck at all nearby, conspicuous objects intensively and finally learn who is bringing them the food.

From the point of view of Zippelius, interpretations of the behavior of the three-spined stickleback , which also go back to Nikolaas Tinbergen , were no longer tenable . According to his publications from the first half of the 1930s, the red belly of a male stickleback was regarded as a characteristic that triggered the fight. The interpretations of the behavior of sticklebacks published by him, which were based on experiments by his students, turned out to be methodologically contestable. Several experimental reviews in the 1990s indicated much more complex causes of turf wars. In the course of the controversy about the validity of the original findings, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt pointed out that the experiments cited by Zippelius had failed because the male sticklebacks were not in their usual territory, but in a neutrally designed aquarium, i.e. in strange surroundings. “You can't repeat often enough how important it is to get to know the animals first before experimenting with them,” he commented on Zippelius' experimental set-up.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt's comment, however, contradicts further, independent repetitions of the stickleback experiments, according to which male fighting behavior is influenced by various environmental influences. The red color of male sticklebacks is now primarily a signal to females ready to mate , which they can use to assess the health of the males. The behavioral researcher and Tinbergen biographer Hans Kruuk also wrote, referring to the "stickleback story", "that central elements were wrong."

Reactions

Zippelius' criticism of essential evidence for the instinctive theory developed by Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz , which was summarized in their 300-page textbook "Die measured theory" in 1992, sparked an unusually heated public debate in German-speaking countries in 1993/94. In the beginning it was mainly supported by media related to school lessons such as Biology Today (“Ethology on the Test Stand”) and Psychology Today (“Theory without Value?”), But at the same time also by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (“Key stimuli in the twilight”) and the Rhenish Mercury and later - after the German Research Service had taken up the topic in one of its "Reports from Science" - under various headings u. a. in the Hamburger Morgenpost ("Did Lorenz misunderstand the animals?"), the Neue Osnachbrücker Zeitung (March 20, 1993), the Frankfurter Rundschau (April 3, 1993), the Swiss World Week (April 15, 1993), the Salzburger Nachrichten (April 24, 1939), the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (May 8, 1993) and the Schwäbische Zeitung (May 26, 1993).

The reaction of the few classical ethological working groups that still existed at the time was a. in the fact that Zippelius' working group was accused of having falsified the data of the criticized ethologists in order to refute them. Renewed repetitions of the historical behavioral experiments objected to by Zippelius, which could have helped to clarify the mutual allegations, only became known in the case of the three-spined stickleback and confirmed Zippelius' criticism. The death of Hanna-Maria Zippelius brought the debate to an abrupt end: the younger behavioral biologists were mostly no longer working on the basis of instinct theory (but in the field of behavioral ecology , sociobiology, or sensory physiology ), and the few remaining German-speaking followers the classical ethology now lacked the counterpart to which they could rub. No attempts have been made since then to find an overall model for understanding behavior.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Friedrich Goethe: Ethological observations on hazel mice (Muscardinus a. avellanarius L.). In: Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie . Volume 8, No. 3, 1951, pp. 348-367, doi: 10.1111 / j.1439-0310.1951.tb00179.x .
  • with Wolfgang Schleidt : Ultrasound sounds in young mice. In: Natural Sciences . Volume 43, No. 21, 1956, pp. 502-502, doi: 10.1007 / BF00632534 .
  • Social skin care as a gesture of appeasement in mammals. In: Journal of Mammals. Volume 36, No. 5, 1971, pp. 284-291, full text (PDF) .
  • The formation of caravans among the field and house shrews. In: Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie. Volume 30, No. 3, 1972, pp. 305-320, doi: 10.1111 / j.1439-0310.1972.tb00859.x .
  • Ultrasonic sounds of nesting mice. In: Behavior. Volume 49, No. 3/4, 1974, pp. 197-204, doi: 10.1163 / 156853974X00516 .
  • The presumptuous theory. A critical examination of the instinct theory of Konrad Lorenz and behavioral research practice. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-528-06458-7 .
  • The much-cited stickleback - is it really a prime example of key stimuli? In: Biology in School. 42nd Volume, No. 9, 1993, pp. 312-318.
  • Key stimuli - yes or no? Results of dummy experiments on the begging behavior of herring gull chicks. In: Biology Today. No. 397, May 1992, pp. 1-5 (= supplement to the Naturwissenschaftlichen Rundschau. 45th year, no. 5, 1992).

literature

  • Elisabeth von Falkenhausen : Picking behavior. In: Biology Today. No. 384, 1991, p. 8.
  • Wolfgang Wickler : Behavioral research in Germany. An overview. In: Biologie heute No. 396, 1992, pp. 1-6.
  • Elisabeth von Falkenhausen: Behavioral theory - what remains? In: Practice of the natural sciences. Volume 42, No. 5, 1993, p. 41 ff.
  • Elisabeth Ponzelar-Warter: Experienced history of science - a lesson in how a scientific community should deal with a critic. In: regional biology, information on teaching (Reg.-Bez. Cologne and Düsseldorf). Issue 1/1994, serial no. 4, pp. 17-27.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ University of Bonn: Professor Hanna-Maria Zippelius. Obituary in: Chronicle and report on the academic years 1992/93 and 1993/94. Volume 108/109, New Series Volume 97/98, Bonn no year, pp. 179–180.
  2. ↑ Hubert J. Gieß: Behavioral research: theory without value? ( Memento of November 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Published in: Psychologie heute. July 1993, pp. 9-10.
  3. ↑ Hanna-Maria Zippelius: The measured theory. A critical examination of the instinct theory of Konrad Lorenz and behavioral research practice. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-528-06458-7 .
  4. ^ In Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt: Outline of Comparative Behavioral Research. Munich and Zurich 1999, p. 180.
  5. ↑ KJ Bolyard, WJ Rowland: Context-dependent response to red coloration in stickleback. In: Animal Behavior. Volume 52, 1996, pp. 923-927.
  6. ↑ M. Milinski, TCM Bakker: Female sticklebacks use male coloration in mate choice and hence avoid parasitized males. In: Nature . Volume 344, 1990, pp. 330-333.
  7. ^ "Looking back at the stickleback story (...) one can see that vital details were wrong." Hans Kruuk: Niko's Nature. The Life of Niko Tinbergen and his Science of Animal Behavior. Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 88.
  8. ↑ Greylag geese also cheat. On: welt.de on February 27, 2009.
  9. ^ Elisabeth von Falkenhausen: Ethology on the test stand. In: Biology Today. No. 403, November 1992, pp. 9-10.
  10. ↑ Hubert J. Gieß: Behavioral research: theory without value? ( Memento of November 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Published in: Psychologie heute . July 1993, pp. 9-10.
  11. ^ Karl-Heinz Wellmann : Innate in humans and animals. In: RAABits Biology. Loose-leaf collection, 1994: Heidelberg (Raabe-Fachverlag für die Schule) = abridged reprint of: “Key stimuli in the twilight.” In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 13, 1993, p. N1.
  12. ↑ Michael Apel: Skimpy with charms. Behavioral researchers argue about a central thesis. In: Rheinischer Merkur from January 22, 1993.
  13. ^ Karl-Heinz Wellmann: Where the Nobel Prize winners Lorenz and Tinbergen were wrong. Well-known behavioral interpretations refuted. In: Deutscher Forschungsdienst No. 9/1993 of March 2, 1993.
  14. ↑ Anke Geffers: Did Lorenz misunderstand animals? In: Hamburger Morgenpost from June 2, 1993
  15. ↑ Dierk Frank: Key stimulus - an outdated concept of ethology? In: Biology Today. No. 402, October 1992, pp. 5-6.
  16. ↑ Gerd-Heinrich Neumann: To the problem of key stimuli. In: Practice of the natural sciences. Volume 42, No. 1, 1993, pp. 30-35.
  17. ↑ Kurt Kotrschal : You don't want to accept the genetic basis of behavior. In: Salzburger Nachrichten of June 12, 1993.
personal data
SURNAME Zippelius, Hanna-Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German behavioral biologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Detmold
DATE OF DEATH August 19, 1994