Journal Fur Ornithologie

Author : Raf De Bont
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022614206X
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)

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Download or read book Stations in the Field written by Raf De Bont and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Modern zoological research [...] aims to study the animal in its own dwelling place.” Otto Zacharias, a German plankton specialist and former science journalist, made this claim in 1905. More than hundred years later, it might sound surprising. When we think of sites of animal research that symbolize modernity, the first places that come to mind are not--to use Zacharias’s example--the parts of inland lakes favored by freshwater plankton. The period around 1900, after all, witnessed the rise of grand urban research institutes that housed industrial-type laboratories filled with mercury pumps, new-fangled microscopes, galvanometers, electric centrifuges, gas motors, and spectrometers. Yet Zacharias belonged to a group of zoologists who were establishing a novel way of studying nature in the field. They developed what ecologists today describe as "place-based research.” It focuses on complex systems of interacting organisms, usually through studies over long periods of time in a natural field context. This was a modern approach and, as such, it needed modern infrastructure: the field station. Beginning in the 1870s, a growing number of biological field stations were founded--first in Europe and later elsewhere around the world. Thousands of zoologists received their training and performed their research at these sites. By revealing the intricate activities that enabled them to perform science in the animal’s "dwelling place,” Raf de Bont is the first to give this history of how life scientists were brought closer to living nature.