Fritz Müller
Encyclopedia
Johann Friedrich Theodor Müller (31 March 1821 – 21 May 1897), better known as Fritz Müller, and also as Müller-Desterro, was a German biologist and physician who emigrated to southern Brazil
, where he lived in and near the German community of Blumenau
, Santa Catarina
. There he studied the natural history
of the Atlantic forest south of São Paulo
, and was an early advocate of Darwinism
. He lived in Brazil for the rest of his life. Müllerian mimicry
is named after him.
in Thuringia
, Germany
, the son of a minister. Unlike most of his contemporaries in Britain, Müller had what would be seen today as a normal scientific education at the universities of Berlin and Greifswald, culminating in a doctoral degree
. Then, he decided to study medicine. As a medical student, he began to question religion
and in 1846 became an atheist, joining the Free Congregation and supporting free love
. Despite completing the course, he did not graduate because he refused to swear the graduation oath, which contained the phrase "so help me God and his sacred Gospel".
It is of some historical interest that Müller's formal education should be so extensive, whereas his British equivalents seldom gained the same kind of qualification. Darwin
had an MA, but Faraday
, Huxley, Wallace
and Bates were autodidacts who had no university degrees at all. Not until Huxley—a great Germanophile
—engineered a change in British attitudes to science were nascent British scientists able to get appropriate education.
Müller was disappointed by the failure of the Prussian Revolution in 1848, and realised there might be implications for his life and career. As a result, he emigrated to South Brazil in 1852, with his brother August and their wives, to join Hermann Blumenau
's new colony in the State of Santa Catarina
. The colony, near the coast on the Itajaí
River, was called Blumenau
. In Brazil, Müller, living with his wife Caroline, became a farmer, doctor, teacher and biologist, sometimes employed by the provincial government, sometimes surviving on his own efforts, sometimes defending against Indians but always collecting evidence of life in the Atlantic forest. The climate here is sub-tropical, and the vegetation typical of the Brazilian coast: it is not rain forest.
Müller gained an official teaching post, and spent a decade teaching maths at a college in Desterro
on the island of Santa Catarina
. Then the college was taken over by the Jesuits, and Müller (though retaining his salary) returned to the Itajaí River valley. He negotiated a menu of botanical activities with the provincial government and spent the next nine years doing botanical research and advising farmers.
In 1876 he was appointed as Travelling Naturalist to the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. This was the ideal post for him: it gave him the opportunity to range over the whole of the Itajaí system and study anything that interested him. A series of reports published in the Archivos of the National Museum record this work. He was a contemporary of several other foreign naturalists who were invited to work there by the Director of the National Museum, Ladislau Netto, such as Émil Goeldi
and Hermann von Ihering
.
At last this, the best period of his life, was brought to an end indirectly, by the overthrow of the liberal monarchy of Dom Pedro II in 1889. The new Brazilian Republic was riddled with corruption and nepotism, and eventually there was a civil war in 1893-5. One of the mistakes made by the Republic was to withdraw support from the regions, no doubt to make sure resources went to the new rulers and their families. Travelling naturalists were to be based in Rio de Janeiro, and instructions were sent out to the regions. Müller refused point-blank and was dismissed, as was von Ihering in São Paulo
.
In his retirement years Müller received many letters of support and offers of financial help (from Darwin, amongst others). His cousin Alfred Möller visited him, and eventually became his biographer. Alfred Möller was also a biologist, who researched fungi, and made a classic elucidation of the underground gardens of leaf-cutter ants.
Müller and his wife had seven daughters and a son, who died early. His wife and several of the daughters also pre-deceased him; these losses affected him more than all the practical difficulties of life in Brazil. His rewards during life from the Brazilian state were minor; but his reputation now stands high. He was one of a half-dozen great naturalists to visit and work in South America during the nineteenth century. Humboldt
, Darwin
, Wallace
, Bates
, Spruce
— and Fritz Müller. He was the only one of these to settle in Brazil for the rest of his life. A statue was erected to Müller in Blumenau in 1929.
Müllerian mimicry
. Müller's great discovery concerned the resemblance between two or more unpalatable species which are protected from predators capable of learning
. The protection is often a noxious chemical, perhaps gained from the larva
eating a particulat plant; or it may be a sting or other defence. It is an advantage for such potential prey to advertise their status in a way clearly perceptible to their predators; this is called aposematic or warning coloration. The principle is of wide application, but in Muller's case the prey were butterflies, and the predators usually bird
s or reptile
s.
The aposematic colours are most often some combination of red, yellow, black, white, whereas palatable animals are usually cryptic. The noxious animals may display by slow flying, and in general are prominently visible. Noxious animals usually have thick, leathery cuticles through which, at certain points, they extrude noxious fluids when pecked; they will often survive a 'trial'.
In Müllerian mimicry an advantage is gained when unpalatable species resemble each other, especially when the predator has a good memory for colour (as birds, for instance, do have). Thus one trial may work to dissuade a bird from several species of butterfly which all fly the same 'flag'. Brazilian butterflies provide some of the most extraordinary examples of mimicry, and Müller, Bates
and Wallace
all had lengthy experience of this. All three traveller-naturalists believed firmly that such systems of mimicry could only come about by means of natural selection
, and all of them wrote about it.
Müllerian bodies in Cecropia
. Müller was able to show that the small bodies at the petiole-bases of Cecropia are food bodies and are used by protecting ants of the genus Azteca
which inhabit the hollow stems of these fast growing trees.
Stingless bees. One of his favourite topics was the life habits of the stingless honey-bees
Melipona
and Trigona
. They are protected by a venom
which they squirt when disturbed. The local name for them is Cagafogo (fire-shitter).
Dimorphism in midges. Another discovery was the dimorphism
in midges of the family Blephariceridae
. There are two female forms with different mouth-parts: one sucks blood, the other takes nectar, as does the male. To prove the point to skeptics, he sexed the flies carefully, and reared them from pupa
e.
Termites. By studying living termites Müller was able to correct many errors to be found in textbooks. For example, their caste system is organised quite differently from ants, since the castes contain members of both sexes, whereas in Hymenoptera the castes are unisexual and the males are haploid. Termites are placed in a completely distinct order from ants, traditionally the Isoptera.
Botanical work. Much of Müller's botany was stimulated by the series of botanical works published by Darwin in the years after the Origin. Müller made contributions in all these fields. After Darwin's Fertilisation of Orchids (1862) he spent years of work on orchids, sending observations to his brother Hermann and to Darwin. Darwin used some of this work in his second edition of 1877, and Hermann later became famous for his work on pollination. On Climbing plants (1867) Müller lent a letter to Darwin listing 40 genera of climbing plants classified by their method of climbing. The next few months saw more observations, which Darwin had translated and published as Müller's first paper in English. As a botanist, Fritz Müller is denoted by the author abbreviation F.J.Müll. when citing
a botanical name
.
theory of evolution by natural selection
was correct, and that Brazilian crustacean
s and their larvae could be affected by adaptations at any growth stage. This was translated into English by W.S. Dallas as Facts and Arguments for Darwin
in 1869 (Darwin sponsored the translation and publication). If Müller had a weakness it was that his writing was much less readable than that of Darwin or Wallace; both the German and English editions are hard reading indeed, which has limited the appreciation of this significant book.
Extensive correspondence exists between Müller and Darwin, and Müller also corresponded with Hermann Müller
, Alexander Agassiz, Ernst Krause
and Ernst Haeckel
.
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, where he lived in and near the German community of Blumenau
Blumenau
Blumenau is a city in Vale do Itajaí, state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. It was founded on September 2, 1850 by Dr. Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau along with 17 German immigrants. A few years later Fritz Müller migrated to Blumenau as well....
, Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
. There he studied the natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
of the Atlantic forest south of São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, and was an early advocate of Darwinism
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
. He lived in Brazil for the rest of his life. Müllerian mimicry
Müllerian mimicry
Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon when two or more harmful species, that may or may not be closely related and share one or more common predators, have come to mimic each other's warning signals...
is named after him.
Life
Müller was born in the village of Windischholzhausen, near ErfurtErfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
in Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, the son of a minister. Unlike most of his contemporaries in Britain, Müller had what would be seen today as a normal scientific education at the universities of Berlin and Greifswald, culminating in a doctoral degree
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
. Then, he decided to study medicine. As a medical student, he began to question religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
and in 1846 became an atheist, joining the Free Congregation and supporting free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
. Despite completing the course, he did not graduate because he refused to swear the graduation oath, which contained the phrase "so help me God and his sacred Gospel".
It is of some historical interest that Müller's formal education should be so extensive, whereas his British equivalents seldom gained the same kind of qualification. Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
had an MA, but Faraday
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry....
, Huxley, Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
and Bates were autodidacts who had no university degrees at all. Not until Huxley—a great Germanophile
Germanophile
A Germanophile is a person who is fond of German culture, German people, and Germany in general, exhibiting as it were German nationalism in spite of not being an ethnic German or a German citizen. Its opposite is Germanophobia...
—engineered a change in British attitudes to science were nascent British scientists able to get appropriate education.
Müller was disappointed by the failure of the Prussian Revolution in 1848, and realised there might be implications for his life and career. As a result, he emigrated to South Brazil in 1852, with his brother August and their wives, to join Hermann Blumenau
Hermann Blumenau
Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau was a Brazilian pharmacist who founded the city of Blumenau, situated in the Itajaí-Açu river valley in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil....
's new colony in the State of Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (state)
Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...
. The colony, near the coast on the Itajaí
Itajaí
Itajaí is a Brazilian city in the state of Santa Catarina.-History:The city was founded on June 15, 1860, but the colonization of Itajaí started in 1658, when the Paulista João Dias D’Arzão arrived in the region. In 1750, Portuguese colonists coming from Madeira and the Azores made this region...
River, was called Blumenau
Blumenau
Blumenau is a city in Vale do Itajaí, state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. It was founded on September 2, 1850 by Dr. Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau along with 17 German immigrants. A few years later Fritz Müller migrated to Blumenau as well....
. In Brazil, Müller, living with his wife Caroline, became a farmer, doctor, teacher and biologist, sometimes employed by the provincial government, sometimes surviving on his own efforts, sometimes defending against Indians but always collecting evidence of life in the Atlantic forest. The climate here is sub-tropical, and the vegetation typical of the Brazilian coast: it is not rain forest.
Müller gained an official teaching post, and spent a decade teaching maths at a college in Desterro
Florianópolis
-Climate:Florianópolis experiences a warm humid subtropical climate, falling just short of a true tropical climate. The seasons of the year are distinct, with a well-defined summer and winter, and characteristic weather for autumn and spring. Frost is infrequent, but occurs occasionally in the winter...
on the island of Santa Catarina
Santa Catarina (island)
Florianópolis Island is an island in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. It is located on the south coast of Brazil between the south 27° latitude and west 48° longitude...
. Then the college was taken over by the Jesuits, and Müller (though retaining his salary) returned to the Itajaí River valley. He negotiated a menu of botanical activities with the provincial government and spent the next nine years doing botanical research and advising farmers.
In 1876 he was appointed as Travelling Naturalist to the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. This was the ideal post for him: it gave him the opportunity to range over the whole of the Itajaí system and study anything that interested him. A series of reports published in the Archivos of the National Museum record this work. He was a contemporary of several other foreign naturalists who were invited to work there by the Director of the National Museum, Ladislau Netto, such as Émil Goeldi
Émil Goeldi
Émil August Goeldi , was a Swiss-Brazilian naturalist and zoologist....
and Hermann von Ihering
Hermann von Ihering
Hermann von Ihering was a German-Brazilian zoologist. He was born at Kiel, Germany, and died at Gießen, Germany. He was the oldest son of Rudolf von Jhering.-Biography:...
.
At last this, the best period of his life, was brought to an end indirectly, by the overthrow of the liberal monarchy of Dom Pedro II in 1889. The new Brazilian Republic was riddled with corruption and nepotism, and eventually there was a civil war in 1893-5. One of the mistakes made by the Republic was to withdraw support from the regions, no doubt to make sure resources went to the new rulers and their families. Travelling naturalists were to be based in Rio de Janeiro, and instructions were sent out to the regions. Müller refused point-blank and was dismissed, as was von Ihering in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
.
In his retirement years Müller received many letters of support and offers of financial help (from Darwin, amongst others). His cousin Alfred Möller visited him, and eventually became his biographer. Alfred Möller was also a biologist, who researched fungi, and made a classic elucidation of the underground gardens of leaf-cutter ants.
Müller and his wife had seven daughters and a son, who died early. His wife and several of the daughters also pre-deceased him; these losses affected him more than all the practical difficulties of life in Brazil. His rewards during life from the Brazilian state were minor; but his reputation now stands high. He was one of a half-dozen great naturalists to visit and work in South America during the nineteenth century. Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
, Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
, Bates
Henry Walter Bates
Henry Walter Bates FRS FLS FGS was an English naturalist and explorer who gave the first scientific account of mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection in a shipwreck...
, Spruce
Richard Spruce
Richard Spruce was an English botanist. One of the great Victorian botanical explorers, Spruce spent approximately 15 years exploring the Amazon from the Andes to the mouth, and was one of the first Europeans to visit many of the places where he collected specimens.The plants and objects collected...
— and Fritz Müller. He was the only one of these to settle in Brazil for the rest of his life. A statue was erected to Müller in Blumenau in 1929.
Chronology of life
A broad chronology of Müller's life is as follows:- 1821-41: Childhood and schooling, near Erfurt.
- 1841-49: University and medical school, mostly at Greifswald and Berlin.
- 1849-52: Respite in the countryside.
- 1852-56: Emigration with brother August and their wives; lived at and near Blumenau on the river Itajaí.
- 1856-67: At Desterro (the provincial capital, later FlorianópolisFlorianópolis-Climate:Florianópolis experiences a warm humid subtropical climate, falling just short of a true tropical climate. The seasons of the year are distinct, with a well-defined summer and winter, and characteristic weather for autumn and spring. Frost is infrequent, but occurs occasionally in the winter...
) on the island of Santa Catarina. He was mathematics teacher at the Lycée. - 1867-76: Return to the Itajaí Valley as a minor provincial official. Worked as a botanist and as an advisor to farmers.
- 1876-91: Travelling naturalist of the National Museum. Explored throughout the Itajaí system. Dismissed by refusing order to live in Rio de Janeiro.
- 1891-97: Last years; visited 1890-93 by cousin Alfred Möller.
Biology
During his life Müller published over 70 papers, mostly in German-language periodicals, some in English and Portuguese. The topics covered a range of natural history topics:- EntomologyEntomologyEntomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...
- TermiteTermiteTermites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...
s - HymenopteraHymenopteraHymenoptera is one of the largest orders of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees and ants. There are over 130,000 recognized species, with many more remaining to be described. The name refers to the heavy wings of the insects, and is derived from the Ancient Greek ὑμήν : membrane and...
: antAntAnts are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...
s and beeBeeBees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...
s - LepidopteraLepidopteraLepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...
: butterfliesButterflyA butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...
and mothMothA moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...
s- Marine zoology
- CrustaceaCrustaceanCrustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...
- BotanyBotanyBotany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
- Botany
- Excursions and surveys throughout ItajaíItajaíItajaí is a Brazilian city in the state of Santa Catarina.-History:The city was founded on June 15, 1860, but the colonization of Itajaí started in 1658, when the Paulista João Dias D’Arzão arrived in the region. In 1750, Portuguese colonists coming from Madeira and the Azores made this region...
river system. Collected seedSeedA seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...
s and specimens; exchanged seeds and with J.D. Hooker at Kew Gardens and sent specimens. - PollinationPollinationPollination is the process by which pollen is transferred in plants, thereby enabling fertilisation and sexual reproduction. Pollen grains transport the male gametes to where the female gamete are contained within the carpel; in gymnosperms the pollen is directly applied to the ovule itself...
in orchids - Climbing plants
Müllerian mimicry
Müllerian mimicry
Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon when two or more harmful species, that may or may not be closely related and share one or more common predators, have come to mimic each other's warning signals...
. Müller's great discovery concerned the resemblance between two or more unpalatable species which are protected from predators capable of learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
. The protection is often a noxious chemical, perhaps gained from the larva
Larva
A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle...
eating a particulat plant; or it may be a sting or other defence. It is an advantage for such potential prey to advertise their status in a way clearly perceptible to their predators; this is called aposematic or warning coloration. The principle is of wide application, but in Muller's case the prey were butterflies, and the predators usually bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s or reptile
Reptile
Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...
s.
The aposematic colours are most often some combination of red, yellow, black, white, whereas palatable animals are usually cryptic. The noxious animals may display by slow flying, and in general are prominently visible. Noxious animals usually have thick, leathery cuticles through which, at certain points, they extrude noxious fluids when pecked; they will often survive a 'trial'.
In Müllerian mimicry an advantage is gained when unpalatable species resemble each other, especially when the predator has a good memory for colour (as birds, for instance, do have). Thus one trial may work to dissuade a bird from several species of butterfly which all fly the same 'flag'. Brazilian butterflies provide some of the most extraordinary examples of mimicry, and Müller, Bates
Henry Walter Bates
Henry Walter Bates FRS FLS FGS was an English naturalist and explorer who gave the first scientific account of mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection in a shipwreck...
and Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
all had lengthy experience of this. All three traveller-naturalists believed firmly that such systems of mimicry could only come about by means of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
, and all of them wrote about it.
Müllerian bodies in Cecropia
Cecropia
Cecropia is a Neotropical genus presently consisting of sixty-one recognized species with a highly distinctive lineage of dioecious trees....
. Müller was able to show that the small bodies at the petiole-bases of Cecropia are food bodies and are used by protecting ants of the genus Azteca
Azteca
Azteca may refer to:* Azteca , a Latin based rock band from the San Francisco Bay Area, United States* Azteca , a breed of horse* Azteca , a genus of ants* Azteca Records , a record label...
which inhabit the hollow stems of these fast growing trees.
Stingless bees. One of his favourite topics was the life habits of the stingless honey-bees
Stingless bee
Stingless bees, sometimes called stingless honey bees or simply meliponines, are a large group of bees, comprising the tribe Meliponini . They belong in the family Apidae, and are closely related to common honey bees, carpenter bees, orchid bees and bumblebees...
Melipona
Melipona
Melipona is a genus of stingless bees. These are widespread in warm areas of the Neotropics, from Sinaloa and Tamaulipas to Tucumán and Misiones . At least 40 species are known....
and Trigona
Trigona (genus)
Trigona is the largest genus of stingless bees, formerly including many more subgenera than the present assemblage; many of these former subgenera have been elevated to generic status. There are approximately 150 species presently included in the genus, in 11 subgenera...
. They are protected by a venom
Venom
Venom is the general term referring to any variety of toxins used by certain types of animals that inject it into their victims by the means of a bite or a sting...
which they squirt when disturbed. The local name for them is Cagafogo (fire-shitter).
Dimorphism in midges. Another discovery was the dimorphism
Polymorphism (biology)
Polymorphism in biology occurs when two or more clearly different phenotypes exist in the same population of a species — in other words, the occurrence of more than one form or morph...
in midges of the family Blephariceridae
Blephariceridae
Blephariceridae, commonly known as Net-winged midges, are a nematoceran family in the order Diptera. The adults resemble crane flies except with a projecting anal angle in the wings, and different head shape, absence of the V on the mesonotum, and more laterally outstretched forward-facing legs...
. There are two female forms with different mouth-parts: one sucks blood, the other takes nectar, as does the male. To prove the point to skeptics, he sexed the flies carefully, and reared them from pupa
Pupa
A pupa is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation. The pupal stage is found only in holometabolous insects, those that undergo a complete metamorphosis, going through four life stages; embryo, larva, pupa and imago...
e.
Termites. By studying living termites Müller was able to correct many errors to be found in textbooks. For example, their caste system is organised quite differently from ants, since the castes contain members of both sexes, whereas in Hymenoptera the castes are unisexual and the males are haploid. Termites are placed in a completely distinct order from ants, traditionally the Isoptera.
Botanical work. Much of Müller's botany was stimulated by the series of botanical works published by Darwin in the years after the Origin. Müller made contributions in all these fields. After Darwin's Fertilisation of Orchids (1862) he spent years of work on orchids, sending observations to his brother Hermann and to Darwin. Darwin used some of this work in his second edition of 1877, and Hermann later became famous for his work on pollination. On Climbing plants (1867) Müller lent a letter to Darwin listing 40 genera of climbing plants classified by their method of climbing. The next few months saw more observations, which Darwin had translated and published as Müller's first paper in English. As a botanist, Fritz Müller is denoted by the author abbreviation F.J.Müll. when citing
Author citation (botany)
In botanical nomenclature, author citation refers to citing the person who validly published a botanical name, i.e. who first published the name while fulfilling the formal requirements as specified by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature...
a botanical name
Botanical name
A botanical name is a formal scientific name conforming to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and, if it concerns a plant cultigen, the additional cultivar and/or Group epithets must conform to the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants...
.
Müller and Darwin
Müller became a strong supporter of Darwin. He wrote Für Darwin in 1864, arguing that Charles Darwin'sCharles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
theory of evolution by natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
was correct, and that Brazilian crustacean
Crustacean
Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...
s and their larvae could be affected by adaptations at any growth stage. This was translated into English by W.S. Dallas as Facts and Arguments for Darwin
Facts and Arguments for Darwin
Facts and Arguments for Darwin is an 1864 book on evolutionary biology by the German biologist Fritz Müller, originally published in German under the title , and translated into English by William Sweetland Dallas in 1867...
in 1869 (Darwin sponsored the translation and publication). If Müller had a weakness it was that his writing was much less readable than that of Darwin or Wallace; both the German and English editions are hard reading indeed, which has limited the appreciation of this significant book.
Extensive correspondence exists between Müller and Darwin, and Müller also corresponded with Hermann Müller
Hermann Müller (botanist)
Heinrich Ludwig Hermann Müller , German botanist who provided important evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution. He was the author in 1873 of Die Befruchtung der Blumen durch Insekten, a book translated at the suggestion of Darwin in 1883 as The fertilisation of flowers...
, Alexander Agassiz, Ernst Krause
Ernst Krause
Dr Ernst Krause also known under the pen-name Carus Sterne was a German biologist.-External links:* at www.eiszeitstrasse.de...
and Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel
The "European War" became known as "The Great War", and it was not until 1920, in the book "The First World War 1914-1918" by Charles à Court Repington, that the term "First World War" was used as the official name for the conflict.-Research:...
.
Biographies
- Alfred Möller, 1920. Fritz Müller. Werke, Briefe und Leben [virtually the sole biographical source for this significant biologist]
- Cezar Zillig, 1997. Dear Mr. Darwin. A intimidade da correspondência entre Fritz Müller e Charles Darwin. Sky/Anima Comunicação e Design, São Paulo, 241 pp. [letters between Müller and Darwin, with very interesting comments on the life of Fritz Müller. In Portuguese]
- David A. West, 2003. Fritz Müller: a naturalist in Brazil. Blacksburg: Pocahontas Press. ISBN 0-936015-92-6 [modern, and most welcome, though the biographical information rests almost entirely on Möller's book. West adds excellent summaries and assessments of Müller's biological work]