Thierry Lodé

Thierry Lodé (born 1956 in Tarbes) is a French biologist and professor of evolutionary ecology in a CNRS lab at the University of Rennes 1. He is also the vice president of a council for natural and biodiversity preservation, thus contributing to conservation biology. Lodé chiefly works to protect otters, polecats, minks, beavers, and amphibians.

His work deals mainly with sexual conflict, and stresses that sexuality appears as a confrontation between males and females. His work also focuses around the idea that "[n]o norms, no exclusive behaviors exist in natural sexuality but variations of sexual behaviors, from homosexuality to polygyny". He propounds the theory that as sexual conflict results in an antagonistic co-evolution, it leads to speciation.

Lodé has written more than 150 international scientific papers in English and four books. He is paraplegic due to a disease of the spinal cord (2005).

Thierry Lodé has studied supernormal stimuli in evolution and built a theory, based on the work of Konrad Lorenz, explaining that bilateral symmetry resulted from supernormal stimuli. Lodé said that bilateral symmetry is an essential characteristic of life. Most animals prefer to mate with sexual partners exhibiting symmetry, since symmetric traits are largely altered by growth and health and asymmetry often reveals a genetic or immune system, specifically , problem.

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