Dennis Chitty

Dennis Hubert Chitty
Born	September 18, 1912 Bristol, England
Died	February 3, 2010 (aged 97) Vancouver, British Columbia
Fields	Vertebrate zoology Ecology
Institutions	University of Oxford University of British Columbia
Alma mater	University of Toronto University of Oxford
Doctoral advisor	Charles Sutherland Elton
Doctoral students	Charles Krebs
Known for	Chitty Hypothesis of Population Regulation

Dennis Hubert Chitty FRSC (18 September 1912–3 February 2010), was a professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia. In 1969, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.^[1]

The Chitty Hypothesis of Population Regulation states that population density is limited by spacing behaviour, which has has genetic underpinnings and rapidly responds to natural selection.^[2] Because of the controversial nature of this idea at the time, David Lack attempted to veto Chitty's dissertation, though it was eventually accepted because of the intervention of Peter Medawar.^[3]

References

1. Obituary
2. Krebs, Charles J. (1978). "A review of the Chitty Hypothesis of population regulation". Canadian Journal of Zoology 56 (12): 2463–2480. doi:10.1139/z78-335.
3. Was the Chitty Hypothesis of Population Regulation a ‘Big Idea’ in Ecology and was it successful?