[3][4] As an accomplished zoologist and ecologist, Allee was best known and recognized for his research on social behavior, aggregations and distributions of animals in aquatic as well as terrestrial environments.

[3] Allee's most significant research occurred during his time at the University of Chicago and at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole in Massachusetts.

[3] He was raised in the Society of Friends and married Marjorie Hill, whose Quaker ancestry extended back into the seventeenth century.

[4] Allee was strongly influenced by Frank R. Lillie, head of the Department of Zoology at the University of Chicago and one of the founders of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

[5] Allee's research also helped to describe protocooperation, where two species interact with one another in a beneficial way that is not essential to the survival of either organism.

It should also be noted that Allee's biological basis of democracy arrived at a time when the future of world politics and human kind's morality were in question themselves.

Raised as a Quaker, Allee publicly renounced war, which made him a target of harsh criticism and persecution.

[11] In the 1940s, Allee argued that his research on the social behaviors of animals provided clear evidence against a biological basis for war.

Specifically, he believed that his theory on the sociality of organisms based on cooperation among individuals proved that war was not a natural occurrence.

According to Gregg Mitman, Allee saw ecologists as "social healers" who were able to provide a naturalistic foundation for ethics through their research.

Allee continued to spend summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, and served as a trustee from 1932 to 1955.

Having been on the editorial board of Physiological Zoology, a journal published by the University of Chicago Press, since its founding in 1928, Allee took over as managing editor in 1937 and remained in that position until his death.

In 1973, the Animal Behavior Society began to offer the W.C. Allee Award for the best presentation of an ethological work of research by a student in a juried competition held at their annual meeting.