Queer diversity in nature:

Diversity is not an exception in the animal world, but the rule. There are also numerous examples of this in the collections at the LIB: Males carrying offspring; same-sex parents in the nursery; large strong females dominating smaller weaker males. Behaviours that have only been taken seriously for a few years without being labelled as "useless" or even "unnatural". "Even if researchers always endeavour to be objective, no human being can completely escape their canon of values - they are strongly influenced by their own lifestyle and environment," says Herberstein.

One example of this is probably one of the greatest luminaries of biological research: Charles Darwin. In the late 19th century, he ascribed clear roles to males and females in the animal world: While males were active, dominant and polygamous, females were passive, shy and monogamous. This world view persisted for almost an entire century until the 1970s, when researchers such as Geoff Parker showed that in many animal species, females mate with several males, sometimes deliberately - a behaviour that was previously considered "unnatural" or "unfeminine".

One example of this behaviour from our collection is the black widow (genus Latrodectus). Here, the female not only dominates the mating behaviour, but also occasionally eats the male afterwards. The males accept this risk and invest all their reproductive chances in a single mating. Other spiders, such as the cunning hunting spider(Dolomedes fimbriatus), can also specifically control which sperm are used for fertilisation. Researchers interpret this behaviour to mean that these female spiders not only exude dominance, but also actively control the genetics of their offspring. "Cryptic female choice" is the name given to this sexual selection, which has only been circulating among biology experts since the 1990s. Previously, it was long assumed that sexual selection ended with mating. "Terms such as "black widow" or "cunning hunting spider" show how cultural ideas characterise biological language. Female control or dominance is often described as threatening or manipulative. Such terms not only reflect animal behaviour, but also the male-dominated view of many researchers - an example of the so-called 'androcentric' view in biology," summarises Mariella Herberstein.

Seahorses (genus Hippocampus) turn "traditional" gender theories in biology completely upside down: male does not mean "procreating" and female does not mean "giving birth" - but the exact opposite. Females lay their eggs in the breast pocket of the male, who fertilises them there himself and - depending on the species - carries them for ten to 25 days. Finally, they give birth to fully developed young through powerful muscle contractions. Using this example, Herberstein makes it clear: "Gender roles are often based on cultural, man-made constructs, and some researchers go to extraordinary lengths to fit the observed behaviour into these stereotypes."

Once the offspring are in the nest, birds show us how diverse the composition of the parents can be in the animal world: Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins(Pygoscelis antarcticus), formed a pair at New York Zoo in 1998. They mated, built a nest together and began by incubating a stone. After keepers replaced the stone with an orphaned egg, they successfully raised the chick. There were also other examples among king penguins(Aptenodytes patagonicus) at a Berlin zoo in 2019 and among Adelie penguins(Pygoscelis adeliae) observed in the wild in Antarctica. "These observations show that social parenthood can be decoupled from sex and provide arguments against the idea that 'natural' reproduction must always be heterosexual or bisexual," summarises the Head of the Centre for Taxonomy and Morphology at the LIB.

Biology has long painted a distorted picture of the animal world - characterised by cultural assumptions about gender, sexuality and reproduction. But nature is not normative: it knows same-sex behaviour, gender diversity, social parenthood and dominant females. Queer perspectives in biodiversity research open up new questions, promote differentiated considerations and contribute to a more inclusive science. For the future, Herberstein therefore demands: "Anyone who wants to protect diversity must also recognise it in its forms and relationships - beyond human ideas of norms. Nature is more diverse than we thought for a long time. It's time for our research to reflect this."