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T. C. Schneirla
Theodore Christian Schneirla
October 16, 2007
Born
Edward Osborne Wilson

(1929-06-10) June 10, 1929 (age 95)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Alabama
Harvard University
Known forPopularizing sociobiology
Epic of Evolution
Character displacement
AwardsPulitzer Prize (1979)
Crafoord Prize (1990)
Pulitzer Prize (1991)
Kistler Prize (2000)
Nierenberg Prize (2001)
Scientific career
FieldsBiologist
InstitutionsHarvard University
ThesisA Monographic Revision of the Ant Genus Lasius (1955)
Doctoral studentsDaniel Simberloff
Donald J. Farish


'Theodore Christian Schneirla, (born July 23, 1902, Bay City, Mich., U.S.—died Aug. 20, 1968, New York, N.Y.), American animal psychologist who performed some of the first studies on the behaviour patterns of army ants.

Schneirla was educated at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (M.S., 1925; Sc.D., 1928), and joined the staff of New York University in 1928. He made the first of eight trips to the Barro Colorado Island, Panama Canal Zone, to study the behaviour of army ants in 1932. His “Studies on Army Ants in Panama,” published the next year, provided new insight into their behaviour. He discovered that these ants operate on a 36-day cycle consisting of a 16-day nomadic pattern followed by a 20-day stationary phase. In 1934 he reported that ants follow a particular pattern when moving into new territory and that raids by these insects peak once during the morning and again in the afternoon. Sudden changes in weather also were found to give rise to sudden bursts of activity. In 1944 he showed that their raids were caused by the level of excitability of the ant colony and not by a scarcity of prey.

In 1943 Schneirla became associate curator of the Department of Animal Behavior at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. After his return from a study of army ants in southern Mexico, he became the full curator of the museum in 1947.

Schneirla was the author of a large number of scientific papers and the coauthor of several books on psychology, including Principles of Animal Psychology (with N.R.F. Maier; 1935) and Recent Experiments in Psychology (with L.W. Crafts; 1938).</ref>

Selected publications

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Books

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  • Maier, N. R. F., Théodore Christian Schneirla, T. C., (1935) "Principles of animal psychology". McGraw-Hill Book Company
  • Aronson, L. R., Tobach, E., Rosenblatt, J. S., Lehrman, D. S. (Eds.) (1972) "Selected writings of T. C. Schneirla". Oxford, England: W.H. Freeman & Co.

Papers

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See also

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References

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Websites
Articles and media
  • [2] - Development and evolution of behavior; essays in memory of T.C. Schneirla (1970)


Category: Comparative Psychologist Category: Zoologist Category: American Museum of Natural History Category: American Museum of Natural History faculty