Arms Races between and within Species
February 9, 2021
Jeremiah Hendren
Arms Races between and within Species
Dawkins, Richard, and John R. Krebs Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences 205, no. 1161 (1979): 489-511https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1979.0081
Foxes and rabbits race against each other in two senses. When an individual fox chases an individual rabbit the race occurs on the time scale of behaviour. It is an individual race, like that between a particular submarine and the ship it is trying to sink. But there is another kind of race, on a different time scale. Submarine designers learn from earlier failures. As technology progresses, later submarines are better equipped to detect and sink ships, and later-designed ships are better equipped to resist. This is an 'arms race' and it occurs over a historical time scale. Similarly, over the evolutionary time scale the fox lineage may evolve improved adaptations for catching rabbits, and the rabbit lineage improved adaptations for escaping. Biologists often use the phrase 'arms race' to describe this kind of evolutionary escalation of ever more refined mutual counter-adaptations.
Richard Dawkins & John R. Krebs