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From: gallagher@husc4.harvard.edu (paul gallagher)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: The Red Queen
Message-ID: <925@husc6.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Dec-86 09:43:34 EST
Article-I.D.: husc6.925
Posted: Fri Dec 19 09:43:34 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Dec-86 00:19:37 EST
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In article <741@aecom.UUCP> werner@aecom.UUCP (Craig Werner) writes:
>
>	It has often been argued that biological change (evolution, I daresay)
>can occur even in the absence of environmental change.  To some this has
>been used to discredit the entire evolutionary scenario.  However, it
>was proposed (and I wish I know by whom) that interspecies competition may
>play a more important role than previously assumed. They dubbed this
>theory "The Red Queen Hypothesis", after the Red Queen's advice to Alice
>in "Through the Looking Glass":  
>	"Sometimes you have to run as fast as you possibly can just to 
>stay in the same place."
>

In the past (till the 1930's) many people believed in "internal" forces
directing evolution, with selection merely working to weed out the unfit.
These ideas are pretty much completely discredited.
Going to the opposite extreme,
the New Synthesis in the 1950's rather dogmatically asserted that almost all
evolutionary change was directed by adaptations to the environment.
Nowadays, people have begun to realize that evolution is controlled not
only by adaptations to the environment, but also by the constraints of
development, history, and body architecture - and also perhaps by chance.
Much allelic substitution occurs without controlling influence from
selection, and with no direct relaionship to adaptation.
An excellent source dealing with the profound changes occuring in evolutionary
theory - which far from discrediting it, improve its ability to explain the
history of life - is Stephen J. Gould's "Is a new and general theory of
evolution emerging" in Paleobiology, 6(1), 1980, pp. 119-130.