"Resistance leads to self-destruction": how an (a)political strategy helped Karl von Frisch succeed during the Nazi era.

Karl von Frisch, one of the leading zoologists of the twentieth century and co-founder of the Journal of Comparative Physiology A, has been frequently portrayed as an opponent of the Nazi regime because he, as a 'quarter-Jew,' faced the threat of forced retirement from his position as a professor at the University of Munich during the Third Reich. However, doubts about an active opposition role have surfaced in recent years. A litmus test for assessing the validity of this notion is provided by our discovery that four of the six core members of the anti-Nazi resistance group 'White Rose'-Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, and Alexander Schmorell-were his students. When they were arrested, sentenced to death, and executed, he seemed to ignore this historic event, both during and after World War II-in line with his belief that resistance leads to self-destruction, and research can flourish only by ignoring what happens around oneself. On the other hand, this seemingly apolitical attitude did not prevent him from making use of politics when it served his interests. Such actions included his (pseudo-)scientific justification of forced sterilization of people suffering from hereditary disorders during the Third Reich and his praise of the Nazi government's efforts to "keep races pure." As unsettling as these and some other political views and actions of Karl von Frisch are, they enabled him to carry out several critical pieces of his research agenda during the Third Reich, which three decades later earned him a Nobel Prize.

The Station Marine d'Endoume, Marseille: 150 years of natural history.

When marine natural sciences began to be the concern of most European scientists, in the middle of the 19th century, Marseille, in southern France, was no exception. The creation, ca. 150 years ago, of the first Zoology Laboratory of the Faculty of Sciences of Marseille took place in 1868. Under the leadership of Antoine-Fortuné Marion, it soon led to the creation of the Station Marine d'Endoume (SME) in 1889. Marion's pioneering work survived both world wars and was then taken to another dimension by Jean-Marie Pérès, head of the marine station from 1948 to 1983. This institution is still alive to date. We here inventoried all the taxa described by SME scientists (1870 to 2021) and arranged them in a public database. Three main periods of activity at the SME are described, as well as the focus made through time to different groups of taxa, selected ecosystems, or biogeographic areas. Through many examples, it was possible to document how these naturalistic, taxonomic descriptions contributed to a broader scientific knowledge within this period. Finally, we discussed trends in taxonomic and naturalistic research, based on the SME experience.

Las láminas zootómicas del profesor Paul Pfurtscheller de Viena: un material científico renovador en las aulas españolas en el primer tercio de siglo XX / [The zootomic slides of Professor Paul Pfurtscheller from Vienna: innovative scientific material in Spanish classrooms in the first third of the 20th century]

Paul Pfurtscheller fue uno de los creadores de material didáctico más universales y re-conocidos dentro de la enseñanza de la Historia Natural, sus láminas de pared de zoología tuvieron presencia a nivel internacional en escuelas normales, institutos de segunda enseñanza e incluso en gabinetes y laboratorios universitarios. Doctor por la Universidad de Viena con una tesis de Botá-nica desarrolló una carrera prominente como profesor de secundaria de la asignatura de Historia Natural en el Gymnasium (Instituto) Franz Josef de Viena, desarrollando un gabinete museo para su asignatura y creando 39 láminas zootómicas como apoyo a su docencia personal. La edición de sus láminas a través de prestigiosa casa editorial vienesa A. Pichlers Witwe & Sohn y posteriormente por la holandesa Martinus Nijhoff permitió la difusión de su trabajo a través de Europa y América. Tras una aproximación biográfica del personaje basada en los documentos encontrados en la Biblioteca Nacional de Austria y en los de la Universidad de Viena, se ha indagado en su papel como docente y en la génesis de su colección, en su éxito pedagógico y el papel que tuvieron en las aulas espa-ñolas de principios de siglo XX. Dentro de las fuentes a considerar destacan las propias láminas, los catálogos comerciales, las leyendas explicativas, los manuales de clase, memorias anuales de los centros estudiados y las imágenes de las aulas, no como meras ilustraciones, sino como objeto de estudio para analizar el espacio escolar y el papel didáctico de las láminas. (AU)

Researcher Li-Ming MA: Contributions to systematic acarology and entomology.

This paper provides a brief biography of researcher Li-Ming Ma (19352021), who was a Chinese systematic acarologist and entomologist. He published 464 papers during his professional life (106 papers during working years, 358 papers after his retirement). During 19572021, he established two new genera, one new subgenus, 342 new species and three new subspecies of arthropods, which are catalogued here. The information provided includes genus and species names, type data, hosts, location, type deposition and reference list. Some of the types of 126 species were transferred from their original deposition to IZAS (Institute of Zoology, Academia Sinica, Beijing, China).

John Berkeley James (John) Wells (19352018)Life, career and remembrances.

John Wells, who died at age 83 on 12 November 2018, was a research scientist, teacher, Professor of Zoology, Dean of Science at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, family man and community leader. He was a man of his time, surviving World War II, progressing to a career that stretched around the world.

The forty-year journey of Zoological Research: advancing with the times.

Since its establishment in 1980, Zoological Research ( ZR) has walked with many scientists during their academic careers (Yao & Zhang, 2015; Yao et al., 2019). During this joyful holiday season and hopeful new year, we are incredibly pleased to share our wonderful news with all authors, readers, editorial board members, and peer reviewers of ZR. Due to its growing academic influence over the last several years, ZR has attained its highest impact factor to date, reaching 2.638 by the end of 2019 (Q1, 12th/169 SCI journals). Furthermore, its current CiteScore has reached 4.3 (as of December 2020), a nearly 60% increase since 2019. Meanwhile, both the publishing capacity and efficiency of ZR have continued to expand. We are immensely proud of each of our efforts in promoting ZR. Of note, your enduring support and faith have helped drive the sustained growth and advancement of ZR, which continues to evolve as a prominent journal in the zoological field.

Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers (1821-1901), the father of experimental zoology and founder of the marine stations of Roscoff and Banyuls.

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers, one of the most curious and active scientific minds among 19th century naturalists, this article retraces his scientific career and recalls the long-term changes he made in the practice of science: promotion of experimental zoology, foundation of a modern scientific journal and establishment of the marine stations of Roscoff and Banyuls.

À l'occasion du 200ème anniversaire de la naissance de Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers, l'un des esprits scientifiques les plus curieux et les plus actifs parmi les naturalistes du XIXe siècle, cet article retrace sa carrière scientifique et rappelle les tournants qu'il a durablement imprimés à la pratique de la science : promotion de la zoologie expérimentale, fondation dune revue scientifique moderne et édification des stations marines de Roscoff et de Banyuls.

Of elephants and errors: naming and identity in Linnaean taxonomy.

What is it to make an error in the identification of a named taxonomic group? In this article we argue that the conditions for being in error about the identity of taxonomic groups through their names have a history, and that the possibility of committing such errors is contingent on the regime of institutions and conventions governing taxonomy and nomenclature at any given point in time. More specifically, we claim that taxonomists today can be in error about the identity of taxonomic groups in a way that Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), who is routinely cited as the "founder" of modern taxonomy and nomenclature, simply could not be. Starting from a remarkable recent study into Linnaeus's naming of Elephas maximus that led to the (putative) discovery of a (putative) nomenclatural error by him, we reconsider what it could mean to discover that Linnaeus misidentified a biological taxon in applying his taxon names. Through a further case study in Linnaean botany, we show that his practices of (re)applying names in taxonomic revisions reveal a take on determining "which taxon is which" that is strikingly different from that of contemporary taxonomists. Linnaeus, we argue, adopted a practice-based, hands-on concept of taxa as "nominal spaces" that could continue to represent the same taxon even if all its former members had been reallocated to other taxa.

Series of forms, visual techniques, and quantitative devices: ordering the world between the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino's mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology.