Article ID: CBB001552625

Understanding Societies from Inside the Organisms: Leo Pardi's Work on Social Dominance in Polistes Wasps (1937--1952) (2015)

unapi

Caniglia, Guido (Author)


Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 48, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 455-486


Publication Date: 2015
Edition Details: Part of a Series: Harvard Fatigue Laboratory
Language: English

Leo Pardi (1915--1990) was the initiator of ethological research in Italy. During more than 50 years of active scientific career, he gave groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of social life in insects, especially in Polistes wasps, an important model organism in sociobiology. In the 1940s, Pardi showed that Polistes societies are organized in a linear social hierarchy that relies on reproductive dominance and on the physiological and developmental mechanisms that regulate it, i.e. on the status of ovarian development of single wasps. Pardi's work set the stage for further research on the regulatory mechanisms governing social life in primitively eusocial organisms both in wasps and in other insect species. This article reconstructs Pardi's investigative pathway between 1937 and 1952 in the context of European ethology and American animal sociology. This reconstruction focuses on the development of Pardi's physiological approach and presents a new perspective on the interacting development of these two fields at the origins of our current understanding of animal social behavior.

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Article Heggie, Vanessa (2015) Introduction -- Special Section: Harvard Fatigue Laboratory. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 361-364). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001552625/

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Authors & Contributors
Brad Bolman
Tara Suri
Welk-Joerger, Nicole
Caniglia, Guido
Nadis, Steven J.
Swenson, Sarah A.
Concepts
Experimental organisms
Social behavior in animals
Animal psychology
Insects
Psychology
Animal experimentation
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
21st century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Institutions
Harvard University
Climax Molybdenum company
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
High Altitude Observatory
University of California, Berkeley
National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.)
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