The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to zoology:
Zoology – study of animals. Zoology, or "animal biology", is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the identification, structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. The term is derived from Ancient Greek word ζῷον (zōon), i.e. "animal" and λόγος, (logos), i.e. "knowledge, study". [1] To study the variety of animals that exist (or have existed), see list of animals by common name and lists of animals .
Kingdom: Animalia
In alphabetical order by surname:
Biology – The natural science that studies life. Areas of focus include structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy.
Ethology is a branch of zoology that studies the behaviour of non-human animals. It has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Charles O. Whitman, Oskar Heinroth, and Wallace Craig. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of the Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and the Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, the three winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology combines laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology.
Zoology is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one of the primary branches of biology. The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον, zōion ('animal'), and λόγος, logos.
Berthold Karl HölldoblerBVO is a German zoologist, sociobiologist and evolutionary biologist who studies evolution and social organization in ants. He is the author of several books, including The Ants, for which he and his co-author, E. O. Wilson, received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction writing in 1991.
Herpetology is a branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians and reptiles. Birds, which are cladistically included within Reptilia, are traditionally excluded here; the separate scientific study of birds is the subject of ornithology.
An academic discipline or field of study is a branch of knowledge, taught and researched as part of higher education. A scholar's discipline is commonly defined by the university faculties and learned societies to which they belong and the academic journals in which they publish research.
Myrmecology is a branch of entomology focusing on the study of ants. Ants continue to be a model of choice for the study of questions on the evolution of social systems because of their complex and varied forms of social organization. Their diversity and prominence in ecosystems also has made them important components in the study of biodiversity and conservation. In the 2000s, ant colonies began to be studied and modeled for their relevance in machine learning, complex interactive networks, stochasticity of encounter and interaction networks, parallel computing, and other computing fields.
Evolutionary anthropology, the interdisciplinary study of the evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and of the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates, builds on natural science and on social science. Various fields and disciplines of evolutionary anthropology include:
Vertebrate zoology is the biological discipline that consists of the study of Vertebrate animals, i.e., animals with a backbone, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Many natural history museums have departments named Vertebrate Zoology. In some cases whole museums bear this name, e.g. the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley.
The spermatheca, also called receptaculum seminis, is an organ of the female reproductive tract in insects, e.g. ants, bees, some molluscs, Oligochaeta worms and certain other invertebrates and vertebrates. Its purpose is to receive and store sperm from the male or, in the case of hermaphrodites, the male component of the body. Spermathecae can sometimes be the site of fertilisation when the oocytes are sufficiently developed.
Invertebrate zoology is the subdiscipline of zoology that consists of the study of invertebrates, animals without a backbone.
Sociality is the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups (gregariousness) and form cooperative societies.
The Museum of Comparative Zoology is a zoology museum located on the grounds of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of three natural-history research museums at Harvard, whose public face is the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Harvard MCZ's collections consist of some 21 million specimens, of which several thousand are on rotating display at the public museum. In July 2021, Gonzalo Giribet, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard and Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, was announced as the new director of the museum.
The Museo Civico di Zoologia is a natural history museum in Rome, central Italy. It is situated next to the Bioparc (Zoo) and can be entered by the Zoo or through the entrance on via Ulisse Aldrovandi. Founded in 1932, it is said to continue the natural history tradition of the Gabinetto di Zoologia dell'Università Pontificia and the collections date from 1792.
La Suerte Biological Field School, located in Northeastern Costa Rica, is one of two field schools operated by the Maderas Rainforest Conservancy. The site is situated in a tropical rainforest basin. It houses courses in primatology, ecology, botany, and other courses related to the flora and fauna of Northeastern Costa Rica.
The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for meritorious work in zoology or paleontology study published in a three to five year period." Named after Daniel Giraud Elliot, it was first awarded in 1917.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to natural science:
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to life forms:
Lucrecia Covelo de Zolessi was a Uruguayan entomologist, curator and film-maker, who taught at the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences at the University of the Republic, where she was Chair of the Entomology department.