In 1973, Van Valen Proposed What Has Been Dubbed the Red

Essay

In 1973, Van Valen proposed what has been dubbed the Red Queen hypothesis, which describes, in part, the evolutionary arms races that occur between predator and prey. This moniker was derived from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, in which the Red Queen says to Alice that "it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place." That is, predator and prey are forced to evolve more complex hunting and antipredator tactics, respectively, but neither can better its opponent. With this in mind, read Bergstrom and Lachmann's (2003) paper, "The Red King Effect: When the Slowest Runner Wins the Coevolutionary Race" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 100, pp. 593-598). Contrast the Red Queen and the Red King effects in terms of (1) the types of relationships that favor each effect, and (2) the rate of evolutionary change inherent in the arms race.