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Concept
Red Queen hypothesis
Summary
The Red Queen hypothesis is a hypothesis in evolutionary biology proposed in 1973, that species must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate in order to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing species. The hypothesis was intended to explain the constant (age-independent) extinction probability as observed in the paleontological record caused by co-evolution between competing species; however, it has also been suggested that the Red Queen hypothesis explains the advantage of sexual reproduction (as opposed to asexual reproduction) at the level of individuals, and the positive correlation between speciation and extinction rates in most higher taxa.
In 1973, Leigh Van Valen proposed the hypothesis as an "explanatory tangent" to explain the "law of extinction" known as "Van Valen's law", which states that the probability of extinction does not depend on the lifetime of the species or higher-rank taxon, instead being constant over millions of years for any given taxon. However, the probability of extinction is strongly related to adaptive zones, because different taxa have different probabilities of extinction. In other words, extinction of a species occurs randomly with respect to age, but nonrandomly with respect to ecology. Collectively, these two observations suggest that the effective environment of any homogeneous group of organisms deteriorates at a stochastically constant rate. Van Valen proposed that this is the result of an evolutionary zero-sum game driven by interspecific competition: the evolutionary progress (= increase in fitness) of one species deteriorates the fitness of coexisting species, but because coexisting species evolve as well, no one species gains a long-term increase in fitness, and the overall fitness of the system remains constant.
Van Valen coined the hypothesis "Red Queen" because under his hypothesis, species have to "run" or evolve in order to stay in the same place, or else go extinct as the Red Queen said to Alice in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass in her explanation of the nature of Looking-Glass Land:Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
Official source
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