Thomas Dyer Seeley

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Thomas Dyer Seeley (born June 17, 1952 ) is an American behavioral biologist, beekeeper and professor at Cornell University .

Life

Seeley grew up in Ithaca . He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Dartmouth College in 1974. In 1978 , Seeley did his doctorate with Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler at Harvard University . In 1992, Seeley was appointed professor at Cornell University. 1993–1994 he was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study , Berlin. 2001–2004 he was visiting professor at the University of Würzburg with the research award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation . In 2001 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . At Cornell University, Seeley was Head of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior from 2005-08 and 2013-14 . He has been a Horace White Professor of Biology at Cornell University since 2014. In 2019, Thomas D. Seeley was accepted as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology section .

Scientific achievement

Seeley's research focused on exploring the honeybees' search for nesting sites . As early as 1975-78 in his dissertation he dealt with the topic for which he learned so much German that he was able to translate the scientific work of Martin Lindauer , who discovered the scout bees. During his dissertation on Appledore Island, a small Atlantic island in the south of the state of Maine , Seeley empirically investigated the criteria according to which swarms of bees accept or not accept housing. He found ten different criteria for it. For fifteen years, from 1980 to 1995, he investigated the question of how the bees in a hive function as a unified whole when collecting food and how they are intelligently distributed among the various flowering plants in a constantly changing landscape of flower spots. His findings about this flowed into his book Honeybees: In the microcosm of the beehive . In 1995, Seeley took up the topic of searching for nesting sites again. In doing so, he relied on Lindauer's ideas from 1951/52 on the dance of the bees on the swarm and continued them. He described the decision-making behavior of the swarm of bees in detail. According to his knowledge, a threshold value effect or quorum occurs in the swarm . If this quorum is exceeded, the swarm sets off from its temporary stopover to its destination, the new home. According to Seeley, the quorum principle is an optimal democratic decision that is proposed to the swarm through dances by a few scout bees and accepted by them in a multi-stage process. Seeley is thus one of the main representatives of swarm intelligence .

Publications

Scientific articles in specialist magazines

Books

  • Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1985.
  • Honey bees: in the microcosm of the beehive , Basel / Boston / Berlin, Birkhäuser 1997, ISBN 3-7643-5606-5 . Original: The wisdom of the hive. The social psychology of honey bee colonies. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA et al. 1995, ISBN 0-674-95376-2 .
  • Bee democracy: how bees decide collectively and what we can learn from it , Original: Honeybee democracy , Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-075138-6 . Original: "Honeybee Democracy". Princeton University Press, Princeton. 2010.
  • Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting . Princeton University Press, Princeton. 2016. (German 2017)
  • Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild . Princeton University Press. Princeton 2019. ISBN 978-0-691-16676-6 .

Awards

Seeley has received numerous international awards.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Seeley CV
  2. ↑ Thomas D. Seeley: Bee democracy: How bees decide collectively and what we can learn from it. Fischer paperback. 2015. p. 101
  3. ↑ Thomas D. Seeley: Bee democracy: How bees decide collectively and what we can learn from it. Fischer paperback. 2015. p. 89f
  4. ↑ Thomas D. Seeley: Bee democracy: How bees decide collectively and what we can learn from it. Fischer paperback. 2015. pp. 195-204
  5. ↑ Thomas D. Seeley: Bee democracy: How bees decide collectively and what we can learn from it. Fischer paperback. 2015. pp. 195-204
  6. ↑ ITIS Report: Neocorynurella seeleyi
  7. ↑ Two Humboldt Prize Winners in Physics and Biology in: IDW-online from February 7, 2001, accessed on September 3, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Seeley, Thomas Dyer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 17, 1952