Early Life and Educational Background
Thornhill was born on December 7, 1944 in Decatur, Alabama, USA. He obtained a B.S. in Zoology at Auburn University in 1968, an M.S. in Entomology at Auburn in 1970, and a Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of Michigan in 1974. His 633-page Ph.D. dissertation, The Evolutionary Ecology of the Mecoptera (Insecta), reported on his original research on the behavior and ecology of mecopterous insects and included the first study of female mate choice in an animal under field conditions.
Professional Career
After receiving his Ph.D., Thornhill was a research entomologist for a year in the Department of Entomology and Nematology of the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. In 1975, he accepted a faculty position in the Department of Biology at The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, where, as of 2016, he is still on the faculty. His position in 2016 at the University of New Mexico is Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Since 1975 until...
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Selected Publications
Books
Thornhill, R., & Alcock, J. (1983). The evolution of insect mating systems. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Thornhill, R., & Fincher, C. L. (2014). The parasite-stress theory of values and sociality: Infectious disease, history and human values worldwide. New York: Springer.
Thornhill, R., & Gangestad, S. W. (2008). The evolutionary biology of human female sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Thornhill, R., & Palmer, C. T. (2000). A natural history of rape: Biological bases of sexual coercion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Representative Additional Publications
Alcock, J., & Thornhill, R. (2014). The evolution of insect mating systems. In D. M. Shuker & L. W. Simmons (Eds.), The evolution of insect mating systems (pp. 275–278). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gangestad, S. W., Thornhill, R., & Garver-Apgar, C. E. (2015). Women’s sexual interests across the ovulatory cycle: Function and phylogeny. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), Handbook of evolutionary psychology (2nd ed., pp. 403–426). New York: Wiley.
Thornhill, R. (2015). Cryptic female choice: A tale about a boy who loved flies. Forward. In A. V. Peretti & A. Aisenberg (Eds.), Cryptic female choice in arthropods: Patterns, mechanisms and prospects. New York: Springer.
Thornhill, R., & Fincher, C. L. (2014b). The parasite-stress theory of sociality, the behavioral immune system, and human social and cognitive uniqueness. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 8, 257–264.
Thornhill, R., & Fincher, C. L. (2015). The parasite-stress theory of sociality and the behavioral immune system. In V. Zeigler-Hill, L. Welling, & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), Evolutionary perspectives of social psychology (pp. 419–438). New York: Springer.
Thornhill, R., & Gangestad, S. (2015). The functional design and phylogeny of women’s sexuality. In T. K. Shackelford & R. Hansen (Eds.), The evolution of sexuality (pp. 149–184). New York: Springer.
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Thornhill, . (2017). Randy Thornhill. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_990-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_990-1
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