From Karl von Frisch to Neuroethology: A Methodological Perspective on the Frischean Tradition's Expansion into Neuroethology**

Abstract

This paper examines a tradition of eusocial insect research stemming from the Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch. As I show in this paper, one of the most enduring features of the Frischean tradition has been an experimental methodology developed by Frisch in the early 1910s. By tracing this methodology's use through Frisch's student, Martin Lindauer, and two of Lindauer's students, Rüdiger Wehner and Randolf Menzel, this paper illuminates a surprising aspect of ethology's development during the last half of the 20 th century. Namely, it sheds light on how the Frischean tradition, a tradition that had a complicated relationship with ethology since the discipline's formation in the 1930s, produced scientists who became leading figures in neuroethology, the most prominent contemporary field of behavioral research to retain the label of "ethology." Some of the features that distinguished Frisch's training method from the program of classical ethology and the work of his contemporaries later helped his academic descendants adapt the method to the neuroethological program.

Multiscale Modeling in Neuroethology: The Significance of the Mesoscale

“…Insects have been important experimental subjects for neuroethologists since the field's inception (Hoyle 1970;Ronacher 2019;Dhein 2022), and a long-standing debate within insect neuroethology concerns modeling and explaining insect navigation (Dhein Forthcoming).…”

“…Neuroethologists seek causal explanations of how neurosensory mechanisms generate and control naturally occurring behavior in naturally occurring contexts (Dhein 2022). As the name suggests, it combines elements of ethology and neurophysiology.…”

“…Insects have been important experimental subjects for neuroethologists since the field’s inception (Dhein 2022; Hoyle 1970; Ronacher 2019), and a long-standing debate within insect neuroethology concerns modeling and explaining insect navigation (Dhein 2023). Historically, neuroethologists focused on behavioral traits that were relatively stereotyped and reproducible in laboratory settings (e.g., a toad shooting its tongue at prey, a fish’s rhythmic fin movement, or a cricket singing).…”