Geoffrey Boxshall, Date of Birth

Geoffrey Boxshall

British zoologist (1950 - )

Date of Birth: 13-Jun-1950

Profession: zoologist, carcinologist, copepodologist

Nationality: United Kingdom

Zodiac Sign: Gemini

Geoffrey Allan Boxshall FRS (born 13 June 1950) is a British zoologist, and Merit researcher at the Natural History Museum, working primarily on copepods.
He earned a First Class BSc in Zoology in 1971, and PhD in 1974, from the University of Leeds.
In 1994 he became a Fellow of The Royal Society and In 1998, he was awarded the Crustacean Society's Award for Excellence in Research.
He has been the Secretary of the Zoological Society of London since 2011 and was also Vice-President of the Linnean Society Council 2012–2013.He is a whole organism biologist with a particular interest in copepod crustaceans.
These are ubiquitous in aquatic systems but all radiated from a hyperbenthic origin in shallow marine waters.
Multiple lineages of copepods colonised the open pelagic, fresh and subterranean waters, and colonised almost all other metazoan phyla as hosts as they adopted parasitism as a mode of life.
The overarching aim of his research is to identify and understand the drivers generating the patterns of copepod biodiversity on the largest scales.
His current focus is primarily on parasites: the repeated evolution of parasitism in copepods provides opportunities to examine the usage of different host taxa and to explore speciation patterns around major host colonisation or host switching events.