Canonical · Evolution & Life · Paper

The Red Queen Hypothesis

Leigh Van Valen · 1973

"Species are locked in a constant evolutionary arms race with predators, prey, parasites, and competitors — meaning a species must keep adapting continuously just to maintain its current relative fitness, since every other species around it is adapting too."

The idea

Van Valen named his 1973 theory after the Red Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, who tells Alice: 'it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.' He argued species face exactly that problem.

Why it works

The takeaway — recall it first

The Selfish Gene

"Natural selection is best understood as operating at the level of the gene, not the individual or the species — organisms are best thought of as survival machines built by genes to make more copies of themselves."

Richard Dawkins · BookContinue→