William Morton Wheeler

April 17, 2019 • by Nicole Elmer
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Right: From "Ants, Their Structure, Development, and Behavior" (1910)


1930

Wheeler collecting ants during a field trip to Australia, around 1930. 

As Wheeler had varied interests outside of entomology, he would soon be looking elsewhere to expand his interests. In 1899, he was offered a “Professorship in Zoology” at the University of Texas at Austin. At this time, Austin was a fraction of the size it is today, and considered to have a “pioneering” academic atmosphere. Wheeler came to UT as an embryologist, with a focus on grasshoppers. During his four-year tenure, he reorganized the department of zoology. Also, he became primarily interested in ants which would become the predominant group of insects he studied, but he also wrote papers on organic evolution. In their younger years, several notable entomologists like Charles Brues and Axel Melander would come to Austin to study in Wheeler’s lab. Other students would include Alfred Kinsey and Otto Plath, entomologist and father to writer Sylvia Plath.

But why, in all places, did Wheeler become focused on ants while in Austin? At the time, Central Texas was considered the northern limit of neotropical ants. There wasn’t much study being done on ants in this area during Wheeler’s time. North American ant studies focused more on species in the North Eastern part of the states, species that were very similar to those in Europe. While Wheeler worked on grasshoppers, several of Wheeler’s students like Brues and Melander would bring in species of ants Wheeler had never seen before, leafcutter ants, army ants, and fire ants. Thus, his curiosity was stoked, a curiosity that would last the rest of his life.

1903 yearbook

From the 1903 Cactus yearbook.

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