Professor Geoffrey Alan Parker FRS (born 24 May 1944) is a professor of biology at the University of Liverpool. He has a particular interest in behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology, and is most noted for introducing the concept of sperm competition in 1970, and his work in the 1970’s and subsequently, applying game theory (theory of games) to biology. With R. R. Baker and V. G. F. Smith in 1972, he proposed a leading theory for the evolution of anisogamy and two sexes, and in 1979 made the first theoretical analysis of sexual conflict in evolution. His work has also included the evolution of competitive mate searching, animal distributions, animal fighting, coercion, intrafamilial conflict, complex life cycles, and several other topics.
Parker was educated at Lymm Grammar School in Lymm, Cheshire, and gained his BSc from University of Bristol in 1965, from where he also gained a doctorate in 1969 under H.E. Hinton, FRS (1912 — 1977). His Ph.D. was on The reproductive behaviour and the nature of sexual selection in Scatophaga stercoraria L. (yellow dung fly), and provided a detailed quantitative test of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, and an early application of optimality theory in biology.
At this time, most ethologists and ecologists interpreted adaptations in terms of “survival value to the species”". However, the paradigm shift of the gene-centric view of evolution (popularised by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene) shortly afterwards overturned this idea: mainstream views in behavioural ecology and sociobiology saw natural selection restored to Darwinian principles in terms of survival value to the individual (and its kin). Parker’s work played a part in this shift and in the early development of behavioural ecology.
He moved to the University of Liverpool in 1968, where he became a lecturer in zoology.
In 1978 he took a research fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge University, returning to Liverpool in 1979. He became a professor in 1989 on election to the Royal Society, In 1996 he became the Derby Chair of Zoology, where as of 2007, he remains.
See also
- Evolutionarily stable strategy
- Resource holding potential
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