Ecology and neuroethology of bat echolocation: a tribute to Gerhard Neuweiler
Gerhard Neuweiler was born on 18 May 1935 in a small village in the black forest in south-western Germany. From 1955 to 1962, he studied biology, chemistry, biochemistry and physics at the universities of Tübingen and Munich. For his doctoral dissertation, he investigated the anatomy and physiology of the visual system, and especially the eye, in the Indian flying fox (Pteropus giganteus). He also developed an interest in the behavior of these large nonecholocating bats. This work was supervised by Franz Möhres, head of the Tübingen animal physiology department at the time. In 1962, Gerhard Neuweiler was awarded the doctoral degree (Dr. rer. nat.) with distinction (summa cum laude). After his PhD, Gerhard Neuweiler moved to India for 2 years to study behavior and social interactions of flying foxes in the wild. For this time, he was a fellow of the government of India and of the German Academic Exchange Service. Gerhard Neuweiler used these Indian years to get deeply familiar with the fauna and flora, but also the art, the religion and the people of his guest country. Throughout his scientific career, he kept research contacts with India and Sri Lanka and returned many times. In 1986, Neuweiler was awarded an honorary professorship at the Department of Animal Behaviour and Neurobiology at Madurai University. Later, he was nominated Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences Bangalore and Distinguished Fellow of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore. It was also in India that Neuweiler and Indian colleagues performed an early comparative study on bat audition, published in the present journal (Neuweiler et al. 1984). This might have marked the onset of Neuweiler’s interest in the adaptation of bat echolocation systems to ecology; a topic on which he later published several influential review papers (Neuweiler 1989, 1990). And it was again in India and Sri Lanka where he gained important insights into echolocation behavior of free-ranging bats in the field (Habersetzer et al. 1984; Neuweiler et al. 1987). But first back to Germany. Gerhard Neuweiler returned from Madurai to Tübingen in 1964. He continued at the Department of Animal Physiology, first as an assistant professor (‘‘Wissenschaftlicher Assistent’’, 1964–1970) and after his habilitation, in 1970, as an associate professor This special issue of the Journal of Comparative Physiology is dedicated to the memory of the late Professor Dr. Gerhard Neuweiler and his legacy in bat echolocation research. Professor Neuweiler died on 15 August 2008 in Munich.