Back
Red Queen hypothesis - Wikipedia
referenceCredibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Wikipedia
Background reference for AI safety discussions involving evolutionary arms races, adversarial co-evolution analogies (e.g., red-teaming, AI-human competitive dynamics), or competitive equilibria in multi-agent systems.
Metadata
Importance: 18/100wiki pagereference
Summary
The Red Queen hypothesis, proposed by Leigh Van Valen in 1973, posits that species must continuously evolve just to maintain their relative fitness against co-evolving competing species. It explains age-independent extinction rates, the evolutionary advantage of sexual reproduction, and the relationship between speciation and extinction rates. The concept draws from Lewis Carroll's metaphor of running just to stay in place.
Key Points
- •Species must constantly adapt and evolve not to improve fitness but merely to avoid losing ground to co-evolving competitors — an evolutionary zero-sum game.
- •Originally proposed to explain 'Van Valen's Law': extinction probability is constant over time for a taxon, independent of species age.
- •Extended to explain the advantage of sexual reproduction, which generates genetic diversity useful for keeping pace with parasites and pathogens.
- •The hypothesis implies that evolutionary progress by one species degrades the fitness of competing species, keeping overall system fitness constant.
- •Has broad relevance as a framework for understanding arms races, co-evolution, and competitive dynamics in complex adaptive systems.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Red Queen Bio | Organization | 55.0 |
Cached Content Preview
HTTP 200Fetched Apr 9, 202637 KB
Red Queen hypothesis - Wikipedia
Jump to content
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Concept in evolutionary biology
For the incident in Through the Looking-Glass , see Red Queen's race .
Part of a series on Evolutionary biology Darwin's finches by John Gould
Index
Introduction
Main
Outline
Glossary
Evidence
History
Processes and outcomes
Population genetics
Quantitative genetics
Variation
Diversity
Mutation
Natural selection
Adaptation
Polymorphism
Genetic drift
Gene flow
Speciation
Adaptive radiation
Cooperation
Coevolution
Coextinction
Contingency
Divergence
Convergence
Parallel evolution
Extinction
Natural history
Origin of life
Common descent
History of life
Timeline of evolution
Human evolution
Recent human evolution
Phylogeny
Biodiversity
Biogeography
Classification
Evolutionary taxonomy
Cladistics
Transitional fossil
Extinction event
History of evolutionary theory
Overview
Scientific Revolution
Before Darwin
Darwin
Origin of Species
Before synthesis
Modern synthesis
Molecular evolution
Evo-devo
Current research
History of speciation
History of paleontology ( timeline )
Fields and applications
Applications of evolution
Biosocial criminology
Ecological genetics
Evolutionary aesthetics
Evolutionary anthropology
Evolutionary ecology
Evolutionary economics
Evolutionary epistemology
Evolutionary ethics
Evolutionary game theory
Evolutionary linguistics
Evolutionary medicine
Evolutionary neuroscience
Evolutionary physiology
Evolutionary psychology
Experimental evolution
Invasion genetics
Island biogeography
Phylogenetics
Paleontology
Selective breeding
Speciation experiments
Sociobiology
Systematics
Universal Darwinism
Social implications
Eugenics
Evolution as fact and theory
Dysgenics
Social effects
Creation–evolution controversy
Theistic evolution
Objections to evolution
Level of support
Nature-nurture controversy
Evolutionary biology portal
  Category
v
t
e
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 ; [ 1 ] 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, [ 2 ] and the p
... (truncated, 37 KB total)Resource ID:
78b5433fab88dfe3 | Stable ID: sid_o9eSZnc8Zr