Dissertation Research: The Field Naturalist Tradition and the Emergence of American Animal Ecology

论文研究：田野自然主义传统与美国动物生态学的出现

• 批准号: 9811355
• 负责人: Sally Kohlstedt
• 金额: $ 0.81万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-07-01 至 1999-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9811355&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Field; Naturalist; Tradition

This dissertation research project will focus on the development and transformation of the American tradition of field natural history, particularly field zoology, between the middle of the nineteenth century and the early 1920's. This tradition, originated by the systematic and biogeographical work of Louis Agassiz and Spencer F. Baird, emerged in the context of federal surveys after the early 1850's. It found its institutional support in connection to the U.S. National Museum and several agencies that funded scientific research of relevance to the survey and management of natural resources: the U.S. Fish Commission, the Bureau of the Biological Survey, and several state natural history surveys established in the American Midwest. This study will argue that during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth this tradition of field zoology underwent a transformation as a result of - and in reaction to - institutional developments, epistemological challenges, and utilitarian concerns. Focusing on the interplay between biogeographical interests and utilitarian concerns, and paying attention to the institutional and generational dimensions of that interplay, the research will improve our understanding of several issues that have concerned historians of biology in America. It will balance the emphasis heretofore put by historians on the morphological tradition of post-Darwinian biology and its experimental transformation with attention to the studies of adaptation and geographical distribution during the second half of the nineteenth century. It will also complete our views of the emergence of ecology in America, showing that many animal ecologists did not merely mimic their botanical counterparts, extending experimental methodologies into field study. They borrowed from their own tradition of observational natural history, particularly from the body of information of animals' habits and life histories put together by naturalists interested in the management of natural resources.

本学位论文的研究项目将集中在美国传统的野外自然史，特别是野外动物学的发展和转变，之间的世纪中期和20世纪20年代初。 这一传统起源于路易斯·阿加西（Louis Agassiz）和斯宾塞·F.贝尔德，出现在背景下的联邦调查后，19世纪50年代初。 它得到了美国国家博物馆和几个资助与自然资源调查和管理有关的科学研究的机构的机构支持：美国鱼类委员会、生物调查局和在美国中西部建立的几个州自然历史调查。 本研究将论证，在19世纪的最后几十年和20世纪初的几十年里，由于制度的发展、认识论的挑战和功利主义的关注，这种野外动物学的传统经历了一次转变。 关注生物学兴趣和功利主义关注之间的相互作用，并注意这种相互作用的制度和世代维度，这项研究将提高我们对美国生物学历史学家关注的几个问题的理解。 它将平衡历史学家对后达尔文生物学的形态学传统及其实验性转变的强调，同时关注19世纪后半叶的适应性和地理分布研究。 它还将完成我们对生态学在美国出现的看法，表明许多动物生态学家不仅仅是模仿他们的植物学同行，将实验方法扩展到实地研究中。他们借鉴了自己的观察自然历史的传统，特别是对自然资源管理感兴趣的博物学家收集的动物习性和生活史的信息。