Tim Birkhead

Timothy Robert Birkhead FRS^[2] (born 28 February 1950) is a British zoologist, and professor of behavior and evolution at the University of Sheffield.^[3][4]

Education

Birkhead was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree from Newcastle University in 1972, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy from University of Oxford in 1976 on the Breeding biology and survival of guillemots Uria aalge^[5] and a Doctor of Science from Newcastle in 1989 with thesis titled Sperm competition and the behavioural ecology of birds.^[1]

Research

Birkhead's research^[6] falls into three main areas:

• Post-copulatory sexual selection, mainly in birds^[7]
• Population biology of birds.
• The history of science, and of reproduction and ornithology in particular.

Birkhead has made important contributions to the field of behavioural ecology — the study of how animal behaviour evolves under the influence of environmental pressures. He also studies the competitive actions of male birds’ sperm.^[2] He showed that extra-pair copulation — where the offspring raised by a pair are the result of the female mating with an outsider male — is common amongst birds. Tim also demonstrated the existence of ‘guarding techniques’, which are carried out by the male bird in a pair. In studies of the zebra finch, he revealed that the sperm of the last male to mate with a female took precedence for fertilising her eggs.^[2]

His 2016 book on birds' eggs, The Most Perfect Thing, was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize.

Publications

• Promiscuity: An Evolutionary History of Sperm Competition. Harvard University Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-674-00666-9. 
• The red canary: the story of the first genetically engineered animal, Phoenix, 2004, ISBN 978-0-7538-1772-8
• The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology. Bloomsbury. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7475-9256-3. ; Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7475-9822-0
• The Magpies: The Ecology and Behaviour of Black-Billed and Yellow-Billed Magpies. A&C Black. 2010. ISBN 978-1-4081-3777-2. 
• Great Auk Islands; a Field Biologist in the Arctic. A & C Black, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4081-3786-4. 
• Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin, Princeton University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-691-15197-7
• Bird Sense: What it Is Like to Be a Bird, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4088-2013-1
• "The Most Perfect Thing: the Inside (and Outside) of a BIrd's Egg", Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016 ISBN 978-1-4088-5126-5

References

External links

• Mark Cocker (17 October 2008). "Flights of fancy". The Guardian. 
• http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=400029