Geoff Parker

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. Much of his work from the 1970s onwards has related to the application of game theory (theory of games) to various biological problems, using the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) approach pioneered by John Maynard Smith and George Price. 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. He has also investigated 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......
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