ZOOL 304
The Red Queen
In a famous scene from Lewis Carroll's whimsical story Through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself hand-in-hand with the Red Queen, running faster and faster but without getting anywhere. The Red Queen explains, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that." (Illustration by John Tenniel.)
According to Leigh Van Valen's Red
Queen Hypothesis, ongoing adaptation may be the evolutionary equivalent
of this scene, requiring each species to evolve continuously just to keep
in the same place among other evolving species (parasites, competitors, predators,
etc.).