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Ernst Mayr

Ernst Walter Mayr (/ˈmaɪər/; German pronunciation: [maɪ̯ɐ]; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005)[1][2] was a German-American evolutionary biologist. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science.[3] His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept.

For another person with the same name, see Ernst Mayr (computer scientist). For people with similar names, see Ernst Mayer, Ernst Meyer, Ernest Mayer and Ernest May

Ernst Mayr

Ernst Walter Mayr

(1904-07-05)5 July 1904
Kempten, Bavaria, German Empire

3 February 2005(2005-02-03) (aged 100)

Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.

German American

United States

Margarete ("Gretel") Simon
​
​
(m. 1935; died 1990)​

Christa Elizabeth Menzel; Susanne Mayr Harrison

  • Otto Mayr (father)
  • Helene Pusinelli Mayr (mother)

Systematics, evolutionary biology, ornithology, philosophy of biology

Although Charles Darwin and others posited that multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood, creating the species problem. Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a new definition for species. In his book Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) he wrote that a species is not just a group of morphologically similar individuals, but a group that can breed only among themselves, excluding all others. When populations within a species become isolated by geography, feeding strategy, mate choice, or other means, they may start to differ from other populations through genetic drift and natural selection, and over time may evolve into new species. The most significant and rapid genetic reorganization occurs in extremely small populations that have been isolated (as on islands).


His theory of peripatric speciation (a more precise form of allopatric speciation which he advanced), based on his work on birds, is still considered a leading mode of speciation, and was the theoretical underpinning for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Mayr is sometimes credited with inventing modern philosophy of biology, particularly the part related to evolutionary biology, which he distinguished from physics due to its introduction of (natural) history into science.

(Myzomela psammelaena ernstmayri) Meise, 1929[22] - a subspecies of bird, a honeyeater, family Meliphagidae, confined to several small islands to the west of the Admiralty Islands, in western Oceania, northeast of New Guinea.

Bismarck black myzomela

(Rallicula mayri) (Hartert, 1930) - a species of bird found in New Guinea.

Mayr's forest rail

(Ptiloprora mayri) Hartert, 1930 - a species of bird found in New Guinea.

Mayr's honeyeater

(Aerodramus orientalis) (Mayr, 1935) - a species of bird found in New Ireland and Guadalcanal.

Mayr's swiftlet

(Leptomys ernstmayri) Rümmler, 1932 [23] - a species of rodent, of the family Muridae, from the Foja Mountains of Papua Province, Indonesia, and Central Cordillera, Adelbert Range, and Huon Peninsula of Papua New Guinea.

Ernst Mayr's water rat

a - Poikilolaimus ernstmayri Sudhaus & Koch, 2004 [24] - a new species of nematode, family Rhabditidae, associated with termites of the genus Reticulitermes, on Corsica.

roundworm

New Ireland rail ( ernstmayri) † (Kirchman & Steadman, 2006) [25] - a relatively large, probably flightless, extinct rail, family Rallidae, known from subfossil remains found on prehistoric archeological sites, in caves on New Ireland, in the Bismarck Archipelago, western Oceania.[26])

Gallirallus

Star Mountains worm-eating snake ( ernstmayri) O'Shea, Parker & Kaiser, 2015 [27] - a 1.2 m, rare and secretive, venomous snake from the family Elapidae, believed to feed exclusively of earthworms, particularly the giant earthworms of the Megascolecidae. The etymology reads: The species name ernstmayri is a patronym honoring the German-American ornithologist, systematist, and evolutionary thinker Ernst Mayr (1904–2005). There are several connections linking Ernst Mayr to this new species of Toxicocalamus, which make him, and this snake, the ideal candidates for a patronym. First, Mayr himself visited New Guinea, and during the late 1920s he spent over 2 years conducting fieldwork in an area now part of PNG, as a member of a joint Rothschild–AMNH expedition focusing on birds of paradise (Aves, Passeriformes, Paradisaeidae), during which he collected many new bird and orchid species. Second, the holotype of T. ernstmayri has been housed in the MCZ collection, mislabeled as Micropechis ikaheka, after having arrived and been accessioned in June 1975, the month and year that Mayr retired. Third, the true identity of this specimen was recognized by one of us (MOS) during a visit to the MCZ in May 2014, undertaken with the financial support of an Ernst Mayr Travel Grant from Harvard University, awarded to enable examination of the Toxicocalamus holdings at the MCZ and the AMNH, the two U.S. institutions where Mayr worked. Finally, 2015, the publication year of this description, marks the decennial of Mayr's passing at age 100, and naming a New Guinea snake after him seems a suitable tribute.

Toxicocalamus

an - Bagauda ernstmayri Kulkarni & Ghate, 2016 [28] - a species of cavernicolous, thread-legged assassin bug, known only from Satara, in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra State, India.

assassin bug

a genus of pseudoscorpions - Curcic et al., 2006

Ernstmayria

a species of spider - Jäger, 2000

Cebrennus mayri

a species of damselfly - Lieftinck, 1972

Palaiargia ernstmayri

a species of bird lice - Eichler, 1954

Anaticola ernstmayri

a species of earwig - Günther, 1930

Irdex ernstmayri

Mayr, Ernst (1942). . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-86250-0.

Systematics and the Origin of Species

Mayr, Ernst (1945). Birds of the Southwest Pacific: A Field Guide to the Birds of the Area Between Samoa, New Caledonia, and Micronesia. New York: Macmillan.

Mayr, Ernst (1963). . Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-03750-2.

Animal Species and Evolution

Mayr, Ernst (1970). . Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-69013-4.

Populations, Species, and Evolution

Mayr, Ernst (1976). . Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-27105-0.

Evolution and the Diversity of Life

Mayr, Ernst; William B. Provine, eds. (1980). . Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-27225-0 – via Internet Archive.

The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology

Mayr, Ernst (1982). . Cambridge (Mass.): Belknap P. of Harvard U.P. ISBN 978-0-674-36446-2.

The Growth of Biological Thought

Mayr, Ernst (1988). . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-89666-6.

Toward a New Philosophy of Biology

Mayr, Ernst (1991). Principles of Systematic Zoology. New York: McGraw-Hill.  978-0-07-041144-9.

ISBN

Mayr, Ernst (1991). . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-63906-5 – via Internet Archive.

One Long Argument

Mayr, Ernst (1997). . Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-88469-4.

This Is Biology

Mayr, Ernst (2001). The Birds of Northern Melanesia. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press.  978-0-19-514170-2.

ISBN

Mayr, Ernst (2001). . New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-04426-9.

What Evolution Is

Mayr, Ernst (2004). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-84114-6 – via Internet Archive.

What Makes Biology Unique?

American philosophy

Biosemiotics

Evolution

List of American philosophers

List of centenarians (scientists and mathematicians)

Species Problem

Philosophy of biology

Proximate and ultimate causation

Coyne, J. A. (2005). "EVOLUTION: Ernst Mayr (1904-2005)". Science. 307 (5713): 1212–1213. :10.1126/science.1110718. PMID 15731434. S2CID 161702759.

doi

Diamond, J. (2005). . Nature. 433 (7027): 700–701. Bibcode:2005Natur.433..700D. doi:10.1038/nature03435. PMID 15716939. S2CID 4417700.

"Obituary: Ernst Mayr (1904–2005)"

Gill, F. B. (1994). "Ernst Mayr, the Ornithologist". Evolution. 48 (1): 12–18. :10.2307/2409998. JSTOR 2409998. PMID 28567792.

doi

Milner, Richard (1990). . New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-1472-9.

The Encyclopedia of Evolution

Schilthuizen, Menno (2001). . Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850393-4.

Frogs, Flies, and Dandelions

Kutschera, U. (2006). . Nature. 443 (7107): 26. Bibcode:2006Natur.443...26K. doi:10.1038/443026b. PMID 16957709. S2CID 134799.

"Dogma, not faith, is the barrier to scientific enquiry"

Mayr, Ernst (1954). "Change of genetic environment and evolution". In Julian Huxley (ed.). Evolution as a Process. London: George Allen & Unwin.  974739.

OCLC

Ernst Mayr Biography and Interview on American Academy of Achievement

telling his life story at Web of Stories

Ernst Mayr

– by Ernst Mayr, Science.

"80 Years of Watching the Evolutionary Scenery"

Archived 2018-09-07 at the Wayback Machine.

Mayr on Eldredge and Gould's punctuated equilibria

Ernst Mayr obituary in the Times

Ernst Mayr obituary in the Economist

Ernst Mayr and the Evolutionary Synthesis

at the Wayback Machine (archived July 25, 2011)

A Review of Mayr's One Long Argument

Interview