TY - JOUR

T1 - Understanding Societies from Inside the Organisms

T2 - Leo Pardi’s Work on Social Dominance in Polistes Wasps (1937–1952)

AU - Caniglia, Guido

PY - 2015/8/12

Y1 - 2015/8/12

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - Ethology

KW - Entomology

KW - Animal Sociology

KW - Social Instincts

KW - Division of labor

KW - Social Dominance

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84938966600&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s10739-015-9401-z

DO - 10.1007/s10739-015-9401-z

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 25687548

VL - 48

SP - 455

EP - 486

JO - Journal of the History of Biology

JF - Journal of the History of Biology

SN - 0022-5010

IS - 3

ER -