Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Evolutionary biology

New take on the Red Queen

Nature volume 463, pages 306–307 (2010)Cite this article

Subjects

Biologists have assumed that natural selection shapes larger patterns of evolution through interactions such as competition and predation. These patterns may instead be determined by rare, stochastic speciation.

On page 349 of this issue, Venditti and colleagues1 provide a revolutionary perspective on a core conundrum in evolution termed the Red Queen hypothesis. Whereas this hypothesis was traditionally based at the level of species in the environment and their interactions with each other, the new work shifts the emphasis to events that result in speciation. Explanations then move from the microevolutionary to the macroevolutionary scale — from natural selection and biotic interaction (interaction between living organisms), to infrequent and unpredictable events that cause reproductive isolation and speciation.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Red Queen put to the test.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: S. KAZLOWSKI/NATUREPL.COM; A. SHAH/NATUREPL.COM; IMAGEBROKER/FLPA; M. RAYCROFT/MINDEN/FLPA; J. ALDRED/NATUREPL.COM; SHATTIL & ROZINSKI/NATUREPL.COM; T. VEZO/NATUREPL.COM; T. MANGELSEN/NATUREPL.COM

References

  1. Venditti, C., Meade, A. & Pagel, M. Nature 463, 349–352 (2010).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Darwin, C. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Murray, 1859).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Van Valen, L. Evol. Theory 1, 1–30 (1973).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Carroll, L. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (Macmillan, 1871).

    Google Scholar 

  5. McCune, A. R. Paleobiology 6, 610–614 (1981).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Pearson, P. N. Paleobiology 18, 115–131 (1992).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Finnegan, S., Payne, J. L. & Wang, S. C. Paleobiology 34, 318–341 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Stenseth, N. & Maynard Smith, J. Evolution 38, 870–880 (1984).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Barnosky, A. D. J. Vert. Paleontol. 21, 172–185 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Benton, M. J. Science 323, 728–732 (2009).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michael J. Benton is in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK. mike.benton@bristol.ac.uk,

    Michael J. Benton

Authors
  1. Michael J. Benton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Benton, M. New take on the Red Queen. Nature 463, 306–307 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/463306a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/463306a

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing