The Red Queen Principle of Selective Adaptation

The Red Queen Principle (or theory, concept, postulate, hypothesis, etc., as you prefer) is based on a passage from Chapter II of Charles Dodgen's (under the pen name of Lewis Carroll) 1871 book "Through the Looking-Glass."

The principle was formalized, slightly more than a century later--in 1973--by Leigh van Valen, in a paper published in Evolutionary Theory, entitled "A New Evolutionary Law." In Dr. van Valen's words: "For an evolutionary system, continued development is needed just to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with."

This is counterintuitive. We presume an evolutionary development in a species to be, intrinsically, a move "upward." Yet, if that development merely counters an adversarial development in a competing organism, stasis (lateral movement that maintains the status quo), and nothing more, results.

Snakes, for example, illustrate the Red Queen principle when, in their evolutionary development, they develop more effective venom glands, stronger fangs, and musculature and ligaments that assist in their exploitation, in order to counter the development of armor, immunities to venom, and improved escape behavior used by their prey. Even snake species supposedly bereft of venom glands or fangs have developed specialized salivary glands (i.e., actually a form of venom gland, so that the distinction between Duvernoy's glands and "venom glands" is somewhat controversial) that produce proteins with phospholipase A₂ activity, for that same reason. If those specialized (Duvernoy's) glands produce a marked improvement in the snake's ability to survive and thrive, their secretions tend to grow more powerful over time. NEXT PAGE ----  PAGE MENU:  1  *  2  *

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