Martin Moynihan

Martin Humphrey Moynihan (born February 5, 1928 in Chicago , † December 3, 1996 in Albi ) was an American behavioral scientist , evolutionary biologist and ornithologist . He was the founder and longtime director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama .

Life

Moynihan was born in Chicago on February 5, 1928. In his youth he traveled widely with his mother in Europe and acquired a very good knowledge of French. At the age of 15 he attended the Horace Mann School in New York City . During visits to the American Museum of Natural History , he became enthusiastic about ornithology and soon met Ernst Mayr there. He took him under his wing and Moynihan wrote his first scientific paper at the age of 18. He had to interrupt his undergraduate studies in biology at Princeton University because of military service in the Korean War , but was able to finish it in 1950 with summa cum laude . He then went to Oxford , where he could not study with David Lack , as intended , but was accepted into the behavioral research group around Nikolaas Tinbergen , which also included later celebrities such as Desmond Morris and Aubrey Manning . It was here that he dealt with seagulls in detail for the first time .

After completing his doctorate , he worked as a post-doctoral student at Harvard and Cornell and traveled extensively to study gulls. He summarized these in 1959 in his treatise on the reorganization of the Laridae ( A Revision of the Family Laridae (Aves) ). 1962 followed another publication on the behavior of South American and Pacific seagulls. In later projects he dealt with cephalopods and New World monkeys . Characteristic of Moynihan's scientific publications are the idiosyncratic, black and white illustrations that he himself made with pen and ink, sometimes during his field studies. In an artistic, loose, sketchy style they show postures and feature studies of the species examined.

Moynihan was in close contact with Ernst Mayr, Charles Sibley and Eugene Eisenmann . Their influence led to his being employed by the Smithsonian Institution in 1957 as head of research on Barro Colorado Island in what was then the Panama Canal Zone . The ornithologist Frank Chapman , the primatologist Clarence Ray Carpenter , and the entomologist Theodore Christian Schneirla had already carried out research on this artificial channel island, which is lined with tropical rainforest . In 1946 it had been taken over by the Smithsonian , but research was rather poor in the following years. Moynihan initially invited fellow scientists from the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Cornell for short visits, but soon realized that a permanent workforce would be necessary and was soon granted additional staff positions. In the 17 years of his leadership he built the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute into a prestigious research institution.

In 1974 Moynihan left his post in Panama. He married the anthropologist Olga Linares and bought a farm in France where he kept and studied pheasants . He also traveled to Senegal, where his wife worked as a scientist, and he did research on Racken himself . He published a work on the behavior of the Opalracke in 1990. In Africa Moynihan contracted various tropical diseases, which over the long term seriously affected his health. He died of lung cancer on December 3, 1996 in a clinic not far from his farm in France .

Works (selection)

• Some aspects of reproductive behavior in the black-headed gull (Larus ribibundus ribibundus L.) and related species . Behavior Supplement 4, pp. 1–201, 1955
• A Revision of the Family Laridae (Aves) , American Museum Novitates No. 1928, American Museum of Natural History, New York 1959, PDF
• Hostile and sexual behavior patterns of South American and Pacific Laridae , Behavior Supplement 8, 1962
• The New World primates: adaptive radiation and the evolution of social behavior, languages, and intelligence , Princeton University Press, Princeton 1976.
• Geographic variation in social behavior and in adaptations to competition among Andean birds , Nuttall Ornithological Club, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1979
• The behavior and natural history of the Caribbean reef squid, Sepioteuthis sepioidea: with a consideration of social, signal, and defensive patterns for difficult and dangerous environments , with Arcadio F. Rodaniche, Paul Parey, Berlin 1982
• Communication and noncommunication by cephalopods , Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1985
• Social, sexual, and pseudosexual behavior of the blue-bellied roller, Coracias cyanogaster: the consequences of crowding or concentration , Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington 1990
• The social regulation of competition and aggression in animals , Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington 1998, ISBN 1-56098-788-X

literature

• Neil Griffith Smith: In Memoriam: Martin Humphrey Moynihan, 1928-1996 , The Auk 115 (3), pp. 755-758, 1998

Web links

Commons : Martin Moynihan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Princeton University memorial page , reprinted in Princeton Alumni Weekly , April 2, 1997