Peoples Choice 2010: The Red Queen Hypothesis

By Gemma Bowker-Wright

Classes started in June. The first lecture for Evolution was on the Red Queen Hypothesis. Alice, Daniel and I weren’t early and sat somewhere near the middle of the lecture theatre. The lecturer was a tall, thin man with oversized limbs. He looked a bit like a giant, spindly bird. While he was waiting for everyone to arrive and stop talking he strutted along the runway at the front of the lecture theatre – his black silhouette outlined against the projector.

“For an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with,” began the lecturer, when everyone was finally seated. Alice started to write notes furiously. Daniel sat very still and closed his eyes. I wrote ‘lecture one’ and the traced the outline of my left hand. The lecturer showed a slide with a picture of the Red Queen standing beside Alice in ‘Through the Looking-Glass’. There was a speech bubble coming out of the Red Queen’s mouth; “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”, she was saying.

“The Red Queen,” said the Lecturer “provides a metaphor – a conceptual underpinning to the evolutionary arms race. One example of the evolutionary arms race is a predator-prey system. In such a system, the predator is continuously evolving to become better at catching the prey. The prey, therefore, has to keep evolving to become better at avoiding the predator – or it will go extinct. As neither predator nor prey are making significant gains in the other, it seems like they are both “running on the spot” in an evolutionary sense.”

The lecturer strutted as he talked, back and forth across the front of the lecturer theatre. As he moved the projector did odd things to his silhouette, making it very small and then very tall and long – it looked as though, with every step, he was covering a great distance.

“Do you remember at primary school,” Whispered Alice, “when everyone used to call me Alice in Wonderland?” I looked across at her in the semi-dark. She smiled, not requiring an answer, and began to take notes again.