Red Queen hypothesis

English

Alternative forms

• Red-Queen hypothesis, Red Queen's hypothesis

Etymology

An allusion to a remark by the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." The hypothesis was advanced in 1973 by American biologist Leigh Van Valen, who called it the Red Queen's hypothesis.

Proper noun

Red Queen hypothesis

1. (evolutionary theory) An evolutionary hypothesis which proposes that organisms must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate not merely to gain reproductive advantage, but also simply to survive while pitted against other evolving organisms in an ever-changing environment.
   • 2000, Edward M. Barrows, Animal Behavior Desk Reference, 2nd edition, CRC Press, page 358:

     Stenseth and Maynard Smith (1984) reformulated this hypothesis by including the idea of evolutionary lag and dismissing Van Valen's zero-sum assumption. They contrast the Red-Queen hypothesis with the stationary hypothesis, q.v. Hoffman and Kitchell (1984 in Lewin 1985a, 400) offer some support for the Red-Queen hypothesis.

   • 2008, Keith Clay et al., “Chapter 7: Red Queen Communities”, in Richard S. Ostfeld, Felicia Keesing, Valerie T. Eviner, editors, Infectious Disease Ecology, Princeton University Press, page 145:

     We extend the Red Queen hypothesis, a mechanism proposed to maintain genetic diversity at the population level, to explain diversity at the community level.

   • 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History, page 219:

     The Red Queen hypothesis defines evolution as a kind of arms race, in which species must constantly evolve and adapt merely to survive.

Translations

evolutionary hypothesis

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Further reading

• Red Queen hypothesis on Wikipedia.Wikipedia