Peter L. Hurd

Peter L. Hurd is an academic specialising in biology. He is an associate professor at the University of Alberta within the Department of Psychology's Biocognition Unit and the University's Centre for Neuroscience. His research primarily focuses on the study of the evolution of aggressive behaviour, including investigation of aggression, communication and other social behaviour which takes place between animals with conflicting interests. Major tools for this research are mathematical modeling (principally game theory and genetic algorithms). He is also interested in how the process of sexual differentiation produces individual differences in social behaviour.

Research

Evolution of animal signalling

Some of Hurd's most cited papers deal with the evolution of mating displays, including the idea that sexually selected traits have evolved to exploit previously existing biases in the sensory, or recognition, systems of their receivers, rather than being handicapped displays. Hurd has argued against the handicap principle view of animal communication, demonstrating the evolutionary stability of conventional (non-handicap) threat displays using game theoretical models. Adding empirical support to this theoretical work, Hurd has also argued that threat displays in birds and headbob displays in the lizard Anolis carolinensis are conventional signals, rather than handicaps. Hurd attributes the preponderance of handicap models in biology to the use of simple signalling games which are incapable of modelling conventional signalling.

Aggressiveness

Hurd has classified models of fighting behaviour into those driven by: 1) fighting ability (aka resource holding potential), 2) perceived value of winning, and 3) aggressiveness and argues that if variation in the last trait -aggressiveness- exists in a biologically meaningful way, it ought to be fixed for life at an early stage of development.