Red Queen Hypothesis
Evolutionary theory that suggests organisms must constantly evolve and adapt simply to maintain their fitness and survive in an ever-changing and competitive environment, inspired by a passage in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.
Origin
Evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen proposed the hypothesis in 1973 to explain "Van Valen's law"—that extinction probability remains constant regardless of species longevity. He named it for Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, where the Red Queen tells Alice: "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Van Valen founded Evolutionary Theory journal to publish his initially rejected manuscript, which became one of the 20th century's most influential evolutionary biology papers.