Walter R. Tschinkel

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Walter R. Tschinkel standing next to a plaster cast of a Pogonomyrmex badius nest.

Walter R. Tschinkel is an American

Namib desert
. His casts of ant nests and botanical drawings appear in numerous museums of art and natural history, from Hong Kong to Paris.

Tschinkel is known for his thorough and inventive experimental design, often involving the construction of special contraptions (stimulatorium,

superorganisms. He is an advocate of scientific natural history and the "bottom-up" approach to biological research, noting that, "...empirical evidence is the horse that pulls the cart of theory through testing, and the three move along the road to understanding."[5]
He suggests that novel and meaningful research questions are best derived from extensive observation, familiarity and careful experimentation.

Tschinkel has written extensively on education.

The Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest
.

Life

Walter Reinhart Tschinkel was born on September 15, 1940, in what is now the Czech Republic. He is the son of Dr. Johann G. Tschinkel and Lotte G. Tschinkel and brother to Henry and Helga Tschinkel. His family emigrated to the United States in 1946, where his father worked in rocket development for the U.S. Army at Ft. Bliss, Texas, and later for the Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1962, Walter received a B.A. in biology from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He went on to the University of California Berkeley where he completed a Masters (1965) and PhD (1968) with Howard Bern and Clyde Willson, in Comparative Biochemistry, for work on the chemical communication and chemical defenses of tenebrionid beetles. Following graduation, he conducted postdoctoral research with

Tom Eisner at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and later served as a lecturer at the Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. He accepted a position in the Department of Biological Science at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida in 1970, attaining the status of full professor in 1980. In 2000, Florida State University began a program allowing faculty with named professorships to select the name used and in 2002, Tschinkel opted to honor Margaret Menzel by opting for the "Margaret Menzel Professor of Biological Science".[7]
Now retired, Tschinkel lives in Tallahassee Florida with his wife Victoria Tschinkel (m. 1968). They have one daughter, Erika Tschinkel.

Research themes and discoveries

  • Chemical defenses of tenebrionid beetles: chemistry, behavior, morphology
  • Comparative internal morphology and systematics of tenebrionid beetles
  • Inhibition of metamorphosis by crowding in the tenebrionid beetle Zophobas rugipes (endocrinology, behavior, life history and population dynamics).
  • Architecture of subterranean ant nests (numerous species)
  • Social biology of the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta

Books

References

  1. ^ Tschinkel, W. R., and C. D. Willson. Inhibition of pupation due to crowding in some tenebrionid beetles. J. Exp. Zool. 176: 137-146 (1971)
  2. ^ Tschinkel, W. R. Methods for casting subterranean ant nests. J. Insect Sci. 10:88 (2010)
  3. ^ Tschinkel, W.R. (2013) A method for using ice to construct subterranean ant nests (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) and other soil cavities. Myrmecol. News 18: 99-102.
  4. ^ Tschinkel, W. R. Insect sociometry, a field in search of data. Insectes Soc. 38: 77-82 (1991).
  5. ^ Tschinkel, W.R. and E.O. Wilson (2014). Scientific Natural History: Telling the Epics of Nature. BioScience doi: 10.1093/biosci/biu033
  6. ^ "School Performance Articles Index".
  7. ^ "FSU - Biological Science". www.bio.fsu.edu. 2002. Retrieved 2021-10-10.

External links

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